Saturn and Neptune will share the same right ascension, with Saturn passing 30' to the south of Neptune.
From Cambridge however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 16° above the horizon at dusk.
Saturn will be at mag 0.4, and Neptune at mag 8.0, both in the constellation Sagittarius.
The pair will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.
A graph of the angular separation between Saturn and Neptune 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 |
| Saturn | 18h45m10s | 22°39'S | Sagittarius | 0.4 | 15"6 |
| Neptune | 18h45m10s | 22°09'S | Sagittarius | 8.0 | 2"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 49° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.
The sky on 9 Oct 2024
| The sky on 9 October 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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47% 7 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
| 21 Sep 1989 | – Neptune ends retrograde motion |
| 16 Apr 1990 | – Neptune enters retrograde motion |
| 05 Jul 1990 | – Neptune at opposition |
| 23 Sep 1990 | – Neptune 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.