Close approach of the Moon and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Appulses feed

Tags: Appulse

The Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 11.6 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Uranus, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 13 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will be visible between 18:08 and 04:58. They will become accessible at around 18:08, when they rise to an altitude of 20° above your eastern horizon. They will reach their highest point in the sky at 23:33, 71° above your southern horizon. They will become inaccessible at around 04:58 when they sink below 20° above your western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.7; and Uranus will be at mag 5.4. Both objects will lie in the constellation Gemini.

They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Uranus around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
The Moon 07h32m40s 22°02'N Gemini -12.7 31'01"8
Uranus 07h32m50s 22°13'N Gemini 5.4 3"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 172° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 23 Nov 2024

The sky on 23 November 2024
Sunrise
06:48
Sunset
16:27
Twilight ends
18:04
Twilight begins
05:11


Waning Crescent

39%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:37 13:04 17:30
Venus 10:14 14:41 19:08
Moon 23:20 06:15 12:58
Mars 20:49 04:12 11:35
Jupiter 17:22 00:49 08:16
Saturn 13:05 18:37 00:09
All times shown in EST.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.

Related news

11 Jan 1954  –  Uranus at opposition
27 Mar 1954  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
03 Nov 1954  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
16 Jan 1955  –  Uranus at opposition

Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

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