Conjunction of the Moon and Saturn

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


The Moon and Saturn will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 27' to the north of Saturn. The Moon will be 6 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 become visible at around 18:32 (EST), 57° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 23:51.

The Moon will be at mag -11.4, and Saturn at mag -0.1, 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 04h32m10s 20°51'N Taurus -11.4 30'27"0
Saturn 04h32m10s 20°23'N Taurus -0.1 17"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 69° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 24 Nov 2024

The sky on 24 November 2024
Sunrise
06:49
Sunset
16:27
Twilight ends
18:04
Twilight begins
05:12


Waning Crescent

27%

23 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:34 13:01 17:28
Venus 10:14 14:42 19:09
Moon 00:22 06:55 13:17
Mars 20:46 04:08 11:31
Jupiter 17:18 00:45 08:11
Saturn 13:01 18:33 00:05
All times shown in EST.

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

07 Feb 2002  –  Saturn ends retrograde motion
11 Oct 2002  –  Saturn enters retrograde motion
17 Dec 2002  –  Saturn at opposition
22 Feb 2003  –  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.

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