Conjunction of the Moon and Saturn

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


The Moon and Saturn will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 27" to the south of Saturn. The Moon will be 28 days old.

From Cambridge however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 0° above the horizon at dawn.

The Moon will be at mag -7.8, and Saturn at mag 0.0, both in the constellation Taurus.

The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Saturn 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 04h51m00s 21°00'N Taurus -7.8 29'34"0
Saturn 04h51m00s 21°00'N Taurus 0.0 16"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 13° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 18 Jun 2031

The sky on 18 June 2031
Sunrise
05:04
Sunset
20:23
Twilight ends
22:38
Twilight begins
02:48


Waning Crescent

0%

28 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:50 13:34 21:19
Venus 08:35 15:52 23:09
Moon 04:07 11:43 19:21
Mars 15:51 21:02 02:12
Jupiter 19:56 00:30 05:03
Saturn 04:23 11:48 19:14
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

01 Feb 2031  –  Saturn ends retrograde motion
05 Oct 2031  –  Saturn enters retrograde motion
11 Dec 2031  –  Saturn at opposition
16 Feb 2032  –  Saturn 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.

Share