The Moon and M45 will make a close approach, passing within a mere 57.2 arcminutes of each other. The Moon will be 12 days old.
From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:14 (EST), 35° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 21:27, 72° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 03:44, when they sink below 12° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.6; 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 | 03h48m40s | 23°11'N | Taurus | -12.6 | 31'11"8 |
| M45 | 03h47m30s | 24°06'N | Taurus | 1.3 | 110'00"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 147° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.
The sky on 24 Dec 2023
| The sky on 24 December 2023 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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95% 12 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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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.