The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Close approach of the Moon and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 16.8 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 23 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 23:20 (EDT) and reaching an altitude of 55° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 04:36.

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The Moon will be at mag -11.5; and Uranus will be at mag 5.6. 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 07h41m30s 22°07'N Gemini -11.5 30'19"7
Uranus 07h41m10s 21°51'N Gemini 5.6 3"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 74° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 17 Jun 2024

The sky on 17 June 2024
Sunrise
05:04
Sunset
20:23
Twilight ends
22:38
Twilight begins
02:49

11-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

81%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:16 12:59 20:43
Venus 05:20 12:59 20:38
Moon 16:10 21:21 02:22
Mars 02:25 09:15 16:05
Jupiter 03:48 11:11 18:34
Saturn 00:41 06:22 12:02
All times shown in EDT.

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

22 Mar 1953  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
29 Oct 1953  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
11 Jan 1954  –  Uranus at opposition
27 Mar 1954  –  Uranus ends 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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Cambridge

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42.38°N
71.11°W
EDT

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