The Moon, Venus, Uranus and Neptune will make a close approach, passing within 4°34' of each other. The Moon will be 3 days old.
From Cambridge , the quartet will become visible at around 16:34 (EDT), 17° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 42 minutes after the Sun at 18:57.
The Moon will be at mag -10.3; Venus will be at mag -4.1; Uranus will be at mag 5.8; and Neptune will be at mag 8.0. The quartet will lie in the constellation Sagittarius.
They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.
At around the same time, the quartet will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Venus around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the quartet at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 19h11m20s | 20°09'S | Sagittarius | -10.3 | 30'14"4 |
| Venus | 19h15m40s | 24°37'S | Sagittarius | -4.1 | 15"6 |
| Uranus | 19h08m40s | 22°54'S | Sagittarius | 5.8 | 3"4 |
| Neptune | 19h14m20s | 21°38'S | Sagittarius | 8.0 | 2"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The quartet will be at an angular separation of 40° from the Sun, which is in Scorpius at this time of year.
The sky on 2 Sep 2024
| The sky on 2 September 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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0% 29 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
| 02 Nov 1991 | – Venus at greatest elongation west |
| 19 Jan 1993 | – Venus at greatest elongation east |
| 08 Feb 1993 | – Venus at highest altitude in evening sky |
| 10 Jun 1993 | – Venus at greatest elongation west |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.