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 14.5 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 4 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 18:30 (EST), 27° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 40 minutes after the Sun at 21:04.

The Moon will be at mag -10.7; 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 01h07m20s 5°42'N Pisces -10.7 32'42"4
Neptune 01h07m40s 5°28'N Pisces 7.9 2"2

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 44° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 22 Feb 2034

The sky on 22 February 2034
Sunrise
06:28
Sunset
17:24
Twilight ends
18:58
Twilight begins
04:54


Waxing Crescent

18%

4 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:25 10:34 15:42
Venus 07:05 12:42 18:19
Moon 08:37 15:12 21:56
Mars 08:34 15:19 22:04
Jupiter 07:03 12:42 18:22
Saturn 13:02 20:34 04:06
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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