The Moon and M45 will make a close approach, passing within a mere 46.6 arcminutes of each other. The Moon will be 22 days old.
From Columbus , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 23:09 (EDT) and reaching an altitude of 73° above the southern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:14.
The Moon will be at mag -12.0; and M45 will be at mag 1.3. Both objects will lie in the constellation Taurus.
They will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably 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 M45 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 | 03h48m00s | 23°20'N | Taurus | -12.0 | 30'43"3 |
| M45 | 03h47m30s | 24°06'N | Taurus | 1.3 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 98° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.
The sky on 4 May 2024
| The sky on 4 May 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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15% 26 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.
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.