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 51' to the south of Saturn. The Moon will be 2 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 difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 11° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 19:07 (EDT), 11° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 44 minutes after the Sun at 20:17.

The Moon will be at mag -10.4, and Saturn at mag 0.5, both in the constellation Libra.

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 14h49m40s 14°57'S Libra -10.4 32'47"3
Saturn 14h49m40s 14°06'S Libra 0.5 15"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 39° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 11 May 2024

The sky on 11 May 2024
Sunrise
05:24
Sunset
19:55
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:28


Waxing Crescent

20%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:34 11:02 17:29
Venus 05:13 12:14 19:15
Moon 07:46 16:04 00:19
Mars 03:46 09:56 16:07
Jupiter 05:46 13:01 20:16
Saturn 03:02 08:40 14:19
All times shown in EDT.

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 Jul 1984  –  Saturn ends retrograde motion
07 Mar 1985  –  Saturn enters retrograde motion
15 May 1985  –  Saturn at opposition
25 Jul 1985  –  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.

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