The Moon, Saturn and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within 6°09' of each other. The Moon will be 10 days old.
From Fairfield , the trio will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 20:12 (EDT), 26° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 20:30, 26° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 23:58, when they sink below 10° above your south-western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.3 in Ophiuchus; Saturn will be at mag 0.1 in Ophiuchus; and Uranus will be at mag 5.6 in 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 | 17h42m50s | 28°33'S | Ophiuchus | -12.3 | 31'44"1 |
| Saturn | 17h43m10s | 22°23'S | Ophiuchus | 0.1 | 17"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 116° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.
The sky on 17 Jul 2024
| The sky on 17 July 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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88% 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.