Close approach of the Moon and Neptune

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Appulses feed

Tags: Appulse

The Moon and Neptune will make a close approach, passing within a mere 28.6 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Neptune, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 5 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will become visible at around 18:08 (EST), 48° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 22:58.

The Moon will be at mag -11.6; and Neptune will be at mag 7.9. Both objects will lie in the constellation Pisces.

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

A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Neptune 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 01h04m50s 5°40'N Pisces -11.6 32'17"1
Neptune 01h05m20s 5°12'N Pisces 7.9 2"2

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 71° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 25 Jan 2034

The sky on 25 January 2034
Sunrise
07:07
Sunset
16:59
Twilight ends
18:35
Twilight begins
05:31


Waxing Crescent

39%

5 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:03 13:17 18:30
Venus 07:31 12:25 17:19
Moon 10:10 16:33 23:05
Mars 09:49 16:04 22:19
Jupiter 08:46 14:17 19:48
Saturn 15:12 22:40 06:07
All times shown in EST.

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.

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Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

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