The Moon and Mercury will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 55' to the north of Mercury. The Moon will be 2 days old.
From Cambridge , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 12° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 19:40 (EST), 12° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 41 minutes after the Sun at 20:53.
The Moon will be at mag -8.7, and Mercury at mag -0.1, both in the constellation Aries.
The pair 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 Mercury around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 02h00m50s | 16°04'N | Aries | -8.7 | 29'35"0 |
| Mercury | 02h00m50s | 15°09'N | Aries | -0.1 | 7"6 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 19° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.
The sky on 4 Apr 2030
| The sky on 4 April 2030 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
4% 2 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Warning
Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.
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
| 04 Apr 2030 | – Mercury at greatest elongation east |
| 20 May 2030 | – Mercury at greatest elongation west |
| 27 May 2030 | – Mercury at highest altitude in morning sky |
| 22 Jul 2030 | – Mercury at highest altitude in evening sky |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.