The Moon and Saturn will make a close approach, passing within 2°03' of each other. The Moon will be 19 days old.
From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 23:13, when they reach an altitude of 10° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 04:06, 45° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 06:28, 35° above your south-western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.2; and Saturn will be at mag 0.5. 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 to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.
At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Saturn 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 | 12h43m30s | 0°14'N | Virgo | -12.2 | 29'44"0 |
| Saturn | 12h40m30s | 1°41'S | Virgo | 0.5 | 18"3 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 116° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.
The sky on 16 Apr 2024
| The sky on 16 April 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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60% 8 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
| 18 Jan 1981 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 26 Mar 1981 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 04 Jun 1981 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 30 Jan 1982 | – Saturn 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.