The Moon and Saturn will make a close approach, passing within 6°09' of each other. The Moon will be 13 days old.
From Columbus , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 21:03 (EDT), 25° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 00:17, 43° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 04:56, when they sink below 10° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.7; and Saturn will be at mag 0.3. Both objects will lie in the constellation Virgo.
They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.
At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Saturn 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 | 13h27m30s | 12°49'S | Virgo | -12.7 | 33'17"2 |
| Saturn | 13h35m00s | 6°57'S | Virgo | 0.3 | 18"9 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 160° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.
The sky on 3 May 2024
| The sky on 3 May 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
17% 25 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
| 15 Apr 2012 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 25 Jun 2012 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 18 Feb 2013 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 28 Apr 2013 | – Saturn at opposition |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.