The Moon and Saturn will make a close approach, passing within 4°36' of each other. The Moon will be 15 days old.
From Cambridge , the pair will be visible between 17:34 and 06:36. They will become accessible at around 17:34, when they rise to an altitude of 9° above your eastern horizon. They will reach their highest point in the sky at 00:05, 69° above your southern horizon. They will become inaccessible at around 06:36 when they sink below 9° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.7; and Saturn will be at mag -0.4. Both objects will lie in the constellation Gemini.
They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.
At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Saturn 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 | 07h14m00s | 17°23'N | Gemini | -12.7 | 31'44"7 |
| Saturn | 07h16m10s | 21°58'N | Gemini | -0.4 | 20"6 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 174° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.
The sky on 4 Jan 2034
| The sky on 4 January 2034 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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99% 14 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
| 02 Nov 2033 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 07 Jan 2034 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 15 Mar 2034 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 16 Nov 2034 | – Saturn enters 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.