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 16.6 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 19 days old.

From Jacksonville , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 23:30, when they reach an altitude of 20° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 04:20, 71° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 06:21, 56° above your south-western horizon.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

The Moon will be at mag -12.3; 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 10h13m00s 12°08'N Leo -12.3 29'32"0
Uranus 10h12m50s 11°52'N Leo 5.4 3"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 124° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 16 Jun 2024

The sky on 16 June 2024
Sunrise
06:21
Sunset
20:30
Twilight ends
22:07
Twilight begins
04:44

10-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

79%

10 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:30 13:36 20:41
Venus 06:37 13:39 20:42
Moon 15:35 21:21 03:00
Mars 03:26 09:58 16:30
Jupiter 05:03 11:56 18:49
Saturn 01:19 07:08 12:56
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

05 Dec 1961  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
17 Feb 1962  –  Uranus at opposition
04 May 1962  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
10 Dec 1962  –  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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Jacksonville

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30.33°N
81.66°W
EDT

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