The Moon and Mercury will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 5°40' to the south of Mercury. The Moon will be 2 days old.
From Fairfield , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 10° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 21:02 (EST), 10° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 37 minutes after the Sun at 22:06.
The Moon will be at mag -9.2, and Mercury at mag -0.1, both in the constellation Gemini.
The pair 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.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Mercury around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 07h45m30s | 17°07'N | Gemini | -9.2 | 30'15"3 |
| Mercury | 07h45m30s | 22°47'N | Gemini | -0.1 | 6"8 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 24° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.
The sky on 28 Nov 2024
| The sky on 28 November 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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3% 27 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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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 Apr 2012 | – Mercury at greatest elongation west |
| 24 Jun 2012 | – Mercury at highest altitude in evening sky |
| 30 Jun 2012 | – Mercury at greatest elongation east |
| 16 Aug 2012 | – Mercury at greatest elongation west |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.