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 13.3 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 11 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 19:56 (EST), 68° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 20:30, 70° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 01:56, when they sink below 20° above your western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.3; and Uranus will be at mag 5.5. 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 07h25m10s 22°16'N Gemini -12.3 31'22"5
Uranus 07h25m10s 22°29'N Gemini 5.5 3"8

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 114° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 24 Nov 2024

The sky on 24 November 2024
Sunrise
06:44
Sunset
16:15
Twilight ends
17:54
Twilight begins
05:04


Waning Crescent

26%

23 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:30 12:53 17:15
Venus 10:10 14:33 18:56
Moon 00:12 06:46 13:09
Mars 20:33 04:00 11:27
Jupiter 17:05 00:36 08:07
Saturn 12:54 18:25 23:55
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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28 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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