The Moon and Neptune will make a close approach, passing within a mere 27.0 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Neptune, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 24 days old.
From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 02:20 (PDT) – 3 hours and 25 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 26° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 04:37.
The Moon will be at mag -11.6; and Neptune will be at mag 7.9. Both objects will lie in the constellation Aquarius.
They 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 the Moon and Neptune 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 | 23h02m10s | 7°36'S | Aquarius | -11.6 | 31'16"2 |
| Neptune | 23h01m40s | 7°10'S | Aquarius | 7.9 | 2"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 75° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.
The sky on 19 May 2017
| The sky on 19 May 2017 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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32% 23 days old |
All times shown in PDT.
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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
| 19 Nov 2016 | – Neptune ends retrograde motion |
| 16 Jun 2017 | – Neptune enters retrograde motion |
| 04 Sep 2017 | – Neptune at opposition |
| 22 Nov 2017 | – 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.