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 1°15' 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 13 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 21:18 (EST), 27° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 23:30, 35° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 02:34, when they sink below 20° 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 -12.7; 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 14h09m10s 13°50'S Virgo -12.7 33'15"0
Uranus 14h10m20s 12°37'S Virgo 5.4 4"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 162° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 22 Nov 2024

The sky on 22 November 2024
Sunrise
06:41
Sunset
16:16
Twilight ends
17:55
Twilight begins
05:02

21-day old moon
Waning Crescent

46%

21 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:36 12:57 17:19
Venus 10:09 14:31 18:53
Moon 22:03 05:23 12:29
Mars 20:40 04:06 11:33
Jupiter 17:14 00:45 08:16
Saturn 13:02 18:32 00:03
All times shown in EST.

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

24 Apr 1976  –  Uranus at opposition
11 Jul 1976  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
14 Feb 1977  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
30 Apr 1977  –  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.

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Cambridge

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42.38°N
71.11°W
EST

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