The Moon and Saturn will make a close approach, passing within a mere 13.1 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Saturn, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 7 days old.
From Jacksonville , the pair will become visible at around 20:09 (EDT), 70° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 01:49.
The Moon will be at mag -11.8 in Taurus; and Saturn will be at mag -0.2 in Orion.
They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.
At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Saturn 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 | 05h55m40s | 22°52'N | Taurus | -11.8 | 32'06"3 |
| Saturn | 05h55m30s | 22°39'N | Orion | -0.2 | 18"1 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 79° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.
The sky on 17 Jul 2024
| The sky on 17 July 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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85% 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
| 27 Feb 1974 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 31 Oct 1974 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 06 Jan 1975 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 14 Mar 1975 | – Saturn ends 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.