The Moon, Jupiter and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within 1°19' of each other. The Moon will be 14 days old.
From Cambridge , the trio will be visible between 21:10 and 04:37. They will become accessible at around 21:10, when they rise to an altitude of 7° above your south-eastern horizon. They will reach their highest point in the sky at 00:54, 26° above your southern horizon. They will become inaccessible at around 04:37 when they sink below 7° above your south-western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.6 in Ophiuchus; Jupiter will be at mag -2.5 in Scorpius; and Uranus will be at mag 5.5 in Scorpius.
They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.
At around the same time, the trio will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Jupiter around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the trio at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 16h24m10s | 19°59'S | Ophiuchus | -12.6 | 30'24"8 |
| Jupiter | 16h18m50s | 20°29'S | Scorpius | -2.5 | 44"4 |
| Uranus | 16h22m30s | 21°27'S | Scorpius | 5.5 | 3"9 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 177° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.
The sky on 17 Aug 2024
| The sky on 17 August 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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93% 13 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
| 14 Mar 1983 | – Uranus enters retrograde motion |
| 28 May 1983 | – Uranus at opposition |
| 14 Aug 1983 | – Uranus ends retrograde motion |
| 18 Mar 1984 | – 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.