The Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within 1°09' 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 16 days old.
From Columbus , the pair will be visible between 22:00 and 04:24. They will become accessible at around 22:00, when they rise to an altitude of 20° above your south-eastern horizon. They will reach their highest point in the sky at 01:12, 37° above your southern horizon. They will become inaccessible at around 04:24 when they sink below 20° above your south-western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.8; and Uranus will be at mag 5.4. Both objects will lie in the constellation Virgo.
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 | 14h13m40s | 14°06'S | Virgo | -12.8 | 33'22"8 |
| Uranus | 14h14m50s | 12°59'S | Virgo | 5.4 | 4"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 169° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.
The sky on 16 Jun 2024
| The sky on 16 June 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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78% 10 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.
Related news
| 10 Feb 1976 | – Uranus enters retrograde motion |
| 24 Apr 1976 | – Uranus at opposition |
| 11 Jul 1976 | – Uranus ends retrograde motion |
| 14 Feb 1977 | – 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.