The Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 58.1 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Uranus, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 16 days old.
From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 20:59, when they reach an altitude of 21° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 01:28, 54° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:29, 26° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.8; and Uranus will be at mag 5.7. Both objects will lie in the constellation Pisces.
They will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Uranus 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 | 01h11m30s | 5°49'N | Pisces | -12.8 | 33'22"5 |
| Uranus | 01h10m20s | 6°44'N | Pisces | 5.7 | 3"7 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 166° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.
The sky on 5 May 2024
| The sky on 5 May 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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7% 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
| 26 Jul 2015 | – Uranus enters retrograde motion |
| 11 Oct 2015 | – Uranus at opposition |
| 25 Dec 2015 | – Uranus ends retrograde motion |
| 29 Jul 2016 | – Uranus enters 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.