The Moon and Saturn will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 3°02' to the south of Saturn. The Moon will be 9 days old.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From Columbus , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 18:01 (EDT), 56° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 19:27, 62° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 01:17, when they sink below 9° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.2 in the constellation Cetus, and Saturn at mag -0.0 in the neighbouring constellation of Aries.
The pair 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.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Saturn 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 |
| The Moon | 02h34m30s | 9°36'N | Cetus | -12.2 | 32'05"5 |
| Saturn | 02h34m30s | 12°39'N | Aries | -0.0 | 18"7 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 104° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.
The sky on 16 Jun 2024
| The sky on 16 June 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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72% 10 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
| 11 Jan 2000 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 12 Sep 2000 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 19 Nov 2000 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 24 Jan 2001 | – 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.