Mercury and Neptune will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 29' to the south of Neptune.
From Fairfield however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be 0° below the horizon at dawn.
Mercury will be at mag -0.0, and Neptune at mag 8.0, both in the constellation Capricornus.
The pair 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 Mercury and Neptune 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 |
| Mercury | 20h47m20s | 18°17'S | Capricornus | -0.0 | 6"6 |
| Neptune | 20h47m20s | 17°48'S | Capricornus | 8.0 | 2"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 26° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.
The sky on 30 Sep 2024
| The sky on 30 September 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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2% 27 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
| 17 Oct 2001 | – Neptune ends retrograde motion |
| 13 May 2002 | – Neptune enters retrograde motion |
| 01 Aug 2002 | – Neptune at opposition |
| 20 Oct 2002 | – Neptune 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.