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 Saturn

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon and Saturn will make a close approach, passing within 5°19' of each other. The Moon will be 20 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 00:12, when they reach an altitude of 10° above your south-eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 03:48, 27° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:00, 25° above your southern horizon.

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The Moon will be at mag -12.4 in Scorpius; and Saturn will be at mag 0.1 in Ophiuchus.

They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.

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 16h28m40s 25°09'S Scorpius -12.4 32'36"6
Saturn 16h33m40s 19°57'S Ophiuchus 0.1 17"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 120° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 17 Jun 2024

The sky on 17 June 2024
Sunrise
05:04
Sunset
20:23
Twilight ends
22:38
Twilight begins
02:49

11-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

81%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:16 12:59 20:43
Venus 05:20 12:59 20:38
Moon 16:10 21:21 02:22
Mars 02:25 09:15 16:05
Jupiter 03:48 11:11 18:34
Saturn 00:41 06:22 12:02
All times shown in EDT.

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

19 Mar 1986  –  Saturn enters retrograde motion
27 May 1986  –  Saturn at opposition
07 Aug 1986  –  Saturn ends retrograde motion
31 Mar 1987  –  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.

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Cambridge

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42.38°N
71.11°W
EDT

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