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 Neptune

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon and Neptune will make a close approach, passing within a mere 16.0 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Neptune, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 18 days old.

From San Diego , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 00:30, when they reach an altitude of 21° above your south-eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 03:19, 35° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 04:47, 31° 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 -12.4; and Neptune will be at mag 7.9. Both objects will lie in the constellation Sagittarius.

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 Neptune 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 17h46m20s 21°49'S Sagittarius -12.4 29'27"2
Neptune 17h46m10s 22°05'S Sagittarius 7.9 2"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 143° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 29 Mar 2024

The sky on 29 March 2024
Sunrise
06:37
Sunset
19:06
Twilight ends
20:29
Twilight begins
05:14

19-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

79%

19 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:13 13:50 20:27
Venus 05:59 11:50 17:40
Moon 22:33 03:45 08:52
Mars 05:12 10:47 16:21
Jupiter 08:29 15:14 22:00
Saturn 05:36 11:18 16:59
All times shown in PDT.

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

29 Mar 1982  –  Neptune enters retrograde motion
16 Jun 1982  –  Neptune at opposition
05 Sep 1982  –  Neptune ends retrograde motion
31 Mar 1983  –  Neptune 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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San Diego

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32.72°N
117.16°W
PDT

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