The Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 53.5 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 12 days old.
From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:47 (EST), 46° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 20:55, 70° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 02:20, when they sink below 21° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.5; and Uranus will be at mag 5.6. 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 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 | 04h53m00s | 23°28'N | Taurus | -12.5 | 29'49"5 |
| Uranus | 04h53m10s | 22°35'N | Taurus | 5.6 | 3"8 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 139° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.
The sky on 15 Jan 2030
| The sky on 15 January 2030 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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90% 11 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.
Related news
| 08 Dec 2029 | – Uranus at opposition |
| 20 Feb 2030 | – Uranus ends retrograde motion |
| 28 Sep 2030 | – Uranus enters retrograde motion |
| 12 Dec 2030 | – Uranus 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.