The Moon and Saturn will make a close approach, passing within a mere 11.8 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Saturn, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 7 days old.
From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:16 (EDT), 51° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 17:46, 52° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 22:59, when they sink below 10° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.0; and Saturn will be at mag 0.5. Both objects will lie in the constellation Pisces.
They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.
At around the same time, the pair 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 pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 00h55m20s | 3°00'N | Pisces | -12.0 | 32'13"5 |
| Saturn | 00h55m00s | 3°12'N | Pisces | 0.5 | 17"8 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 88° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.
The sky on 16 Aug 2024
| The sky on 16 August 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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87% 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
| 16 Dec 1997 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 15 Aug 1998 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 23 Oct 1998 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 29 Dec 1998 | – Saturn 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.