The Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within 1°07' 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 16 days old.
From Fairfield , the pair will be visible between 20:03 and 04:33. They will become accessible at around 20:03, when they rise to an altitude of 20° above your eastern horizon. They will reach their highest point in the sky at 00:18, 50° above your southern horizon. They will become inaccessible at around 04:33 when they sink below 20° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.8; and Uranus will be at mag 5.3. Both objects will lie in the constellation Virgo.
They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will 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 | 11h55m00s | 2°37'N | Virgo | -12.8 | 32'35"5 |
| Uranus | 11h52m50s | 1°37'N | Virgo | 5.3 | 4"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 176° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.
The sky on 16 Aug 2024
| The sky on 16 August 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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88% 12 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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
| 04 Jan 1968 | – Uranus enters retrograde motion |
| 17 Mar 1968 | – Uranus at opposition |
| 01 Jun 1968 | – Uranus ends retrograde motion |
| 08 Jan 1969 | – Uranus enters retrograde motion |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.