The Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within 1°01' 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 10 days old.
From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 21:08 (EDT), 23° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 00:41.
The Moon will be at mag -12.2; and Uranus will be at mag 5.6. Both objects will lie in the constellation Ophiuchus.
They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will 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 | 16h32m40s | 20°52'S | Ophiuchus | -12.2 | 30'56"6 |
| Uranus | 16h32m20s | 21°53'S | Ophiuchus | 5.6 | 3"7 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 113° from the Sun, which is in Cancer at this time of year.
The sky on 23 Jul 2024
| The sky on 23 July 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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91% 18 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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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| 02 Jun 2068 | – Uranus at opposition |
| 18 Aug 2068 | – Uranus ends retrograde motion |
| 23 Mar 2069 | – Uranus enters retrograde motion |
| 07 Jun 2069 | – 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.