The Moon and Saturn will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 11' to the north of Saturn. The Moon will be 22 days old.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 23:08 (EDT) and reaching an altitude of 68° above the southern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:01.
The Moon will be at mag -12.0, and Saturn at mag -0.2, both in the constellation Taurus.
The pair 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.
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 | 04h54m20s | 20°58'N | Taurus | -12.0 | 31'14"8 |
| Saturn | 04h54m20s | 20°47'N | Taurus | -0.2 | 18"5 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 93° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.
The sky on 17 Jul 2024
| The sky on 17 July 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
84% 12 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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
| 24 Jan 2001 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 26 Sep 2001 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 03 Dec 2001 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 07 Feb 2002 | – 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.