Close approach of the Moon and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Appulses feed

Tags: Appulse

The Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 21.1 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Uranus, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 13 days old.

From Columbus , the pair will be visible between 22:19 and 02:10. They will become accessible at around 22:19, when they rise to an altitude of 21° above your south-eastern horizon. They will reach their highest point in the sky at 00:14, 26° above your southern horizon. They will become inaccessible at around 02:10 when they sink below 21° above your south-western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.5; and Uranus will be at mag 5.6. Both objects will lie in the constellation Sagittarius.

They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Uranus around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
The Moon 18h48m40s 23°42'S Sagittarius -12.5 29'25"4
Uranus 18h48m30s 23°21'S Sagittarius 5.6 3"8

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 159° from the Sun, which is in Cancer at this time of year.

The sky on 23 Nov 2024

The sky on 23 November 2024
Sunrise
07:24
Sunset
17:09
Twilight ends
18:45
Twilight begins
05:48


Waning Crescent

41%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 09:12 13:43 18:13
Venus 10:48 15:19 19:50
Moon 00:03 06:55 13:36
Mars 21:31 04:51 12:10
Jupiter 18:04 01:28 08:51
Saturn 13:43 19:16 00:49
All times shown in EST.

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

04 Jul 1991  –  Uranus at opposition
19 Sep 1991  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
21 Apr 1992  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
07 Jul 1992  –  Uranus 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.

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