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 11.2 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 18 days old.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 21:47, when they reach an altitude of 20° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 02:43, 69° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:51, 42° 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 Leo.

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 09h52m30s 13°29'N Leo -12.7 32'57"0
Uranus 09h52m50s 13°39'N Leo 5.4 4"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 140° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 18 Aug 2025

The sky on 18 August 2025
Sunrise
06:13
Sunset
19:35
Twilight ends
21:05
Twilight begins
04:42


Waning Crescent

16%

25 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:47 11:39 18:31
Venus 03:31 10:35 17:38
Moon 01:12 08:52 16:32
Mars 09:32 15:28 21:24
Jupiter 02:59 10:08 17:16
Saturn 21:12 03:09 09:07
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

01 Dec 2044  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
12 Feb 2045  –  Uranus at opposition
29 Apr 2045  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
06 Dec 2045  –  Uranus 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.

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