ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors examine in some detail the solar and lunar eclipses and the occultations of stars by the Moon. Stellar occultations by asteroids and trans-Neptunian objects and transits of planets over the disk of their host star (exoplanets) are briefly mentioned. Transits are indeed the most effective way to discover exoplanets, both from well-equipped ground telescopes even of modest size, for instance, the TRAPPIST telescope, and from space, as attested by the NASA satellites Kepler and TESS. For lunar eclipses, the procedure can be considerably simplified, because the observer is on the body casting the shadow, and the circumstances are identical for all terrestrial observers having the Moon above the horizon. It is worth noting that the occultation technique does not require large telescopes to achieve high-spatial resolution, because the diffraction takes place not in the telescope but at the screen.
