The Moon and Neptune will make a close approach, passing within a mere 24.2 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 13 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will be visible between 17:57 and 04:03. They will become accessible at around 17:57, when they rise to an altitude of 21° above your eastern horizon. They will reach their highest point in the sky at 23:00, 66° above your southern horizon. They will become inaccessible at around 04:03 when they sink below 21° above your western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.7; and Neptune will be at mag 7.8. Both objects will lie in the constellation Taurus.

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:

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 170° from the Sun, which is in Scorpius at this time of year.

The sky on 22 Jul 2024

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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