Conjunction of the Moon and Saturn

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


The Moon and Saturn will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 21' to the south of Saturn. The Moon will be 14 days old.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 18:44 (EST), 24° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 22:50, 52° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 04:08, when they sink below 11° above your western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.5, and Saturn at mag 0.6, both in the constellation Leo.

The pair 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.

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 11h36m50s 4°45'N Leo -12.5 29'23"8
Saturn 11h36m50s 5°07'N Leo 0.6 19"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 162° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 26 Nov 2024

The sky on 26 November 2024
Sunrise
06:46
Sunset
16:13
Twilight ends
17:53
Twilight begins
05:06


Waning Crescent

12%

25 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:21 12:45 17:10
Venus 10:11 14:36 19:00
Moon 02:14 08:04 13:43
Mars 20:26 03:53 11:20
Jupiter 16:56 00:27 07:58
Saturn 12:46 18:17 23:48
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

13 Mar 1980  –  Saturn at opposition
22 May 1980  –  Saturn ends retrograde motion
23 Jul 1980  –  Saturn ring plane crossing
18 Jan 1981  –  Saturn 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.

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