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 Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 9.5 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 23 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 01:48 (EST) and reaching an altitude of 25° above the southern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:30.

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The Moon will be at mag -11.7; and Uranus will be at mag 5.6. Both objects will lie in the constellation Ophiuchus.

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 16h48m30s 22°32'S Ophiuchus -11.7 30'46"0
Uranus 16h48m40s 22°22'S Ophiuchus 5.6 3"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 81° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 22 Nov 2024

The sky on 22 November 2024
Sunrise
06:47
Sunset
16:28
Twilight ends
18:05
Twilight begins
05:10

21-day old moon
Waning Crescent

46%

21 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:40 13:06 17:32
Venus 10:13 14:39 19:06
Moon 22:16 05:32 12:36
Mars 20:52 04:15 11:38
Jupiter 17:26 00:53 08:20
Saturn 13:09 18:41 00:13
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

14 Aug 1983  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
18 Mar 1984  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
01 Jun 1984  –  Uranus at opposition
18 Aug 1984  –  Uranus ends 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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Fairfield

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41.14°N
73.26°W
EST

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