The Moon, Saturn and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within 6°03' of each other. The Moon will be 15 days old.
From Cambridge , the trio will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 21:02 (EDT), 12° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 00:13, 25° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 03:37, when they sink below 9° above your south-western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.7; Saturn will be at mag 0.0; and Uranus will be at mag 5.6. The trio will lie in the constellation Sagittarius.
They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.
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 Saturn 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 | 17h54m50s | 28°22'S | Sagittarius | -12.7 | 32'15"8 |
| Saturn | 17h54m40s | 22°18'S | Sagittarius | 0.0 | 18"3 |
| Uranus | 17h55m00s | 23°38'S | Sagittarius | 5.6 | 3"8 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 169° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.
The sky on 16 Aug 2024
| The sky on 16 August 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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92% 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
| 20 Jun 1988 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 30 Aug 1988 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 22 Apr 1989 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 02 Jul 1989 | – 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.