The Moon and Saturn will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 53' to the north of Saturn. The Moon will be 11 days old.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 18:39 (EDT), 45° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 21:51, 71° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 04:22, when they sink below 9° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.6 in the constellation Taurus, and Saturn at mag -0.4 in the neighbouring constellation of Orion.
The pair will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Saturn around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 05h54m10s | 23°22'N | Taurus | -12.6 | 32'53"9 |
| Saturn | 05h54m10s | 22°29'N | Orion | -0.4 | 20"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 133° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.
The sky on 17 Jul 2024
| The sky on 17 July 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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86% 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
| 23 Dec 1973 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 27 Feb 1974 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 31 Oct 1974 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 06 Jan 1975 | – Saturn 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.