Close approach of the Moon and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Appulses feed

Tags: Appulse

The Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 18.4 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Uranus, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 15 days old.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 18:11 (PDT), 22° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 23:21, 78° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 04:38, when they sink below 20° above your western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.7; and Uranus will be at mag 5.4. Both objects will lie in the constellation Gemini.

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 Uranus 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 07h32m10s 21°56'N Gemini -12.7 31'49"5
Uranus 07h32m10s 22°15'N Gemini 5.4 3"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 171° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 20 May 2025

The sky on 20 May 2025
Sunrise
05:44
Sunset
19:50
Twilight ends
21:29
Twilight begins
04:05


Waning Crescent

39%

23 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:14 12:03 18:52
Venus 03:37 09:52 16:07
Moon 01:46 07:11 12:45
Mars 11:14 18:07 01:01
Jupiter 07:25 14:35 21:46
Saturn 03:01 08:58 14:55
All times shown in PDT.

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

11 Jan 2038  –  Uranus at opposition
27 Mar 2038  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
03 Nov 2038  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
16 Jan 2039  –  Uranus at opposition

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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