The Moon and Mercury will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 33' to the south of Mercury. The Moon will be 1 days old.
From Fairfield however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 14° from it.
The Moon will be at mag -8.1, and Mercury at mag 3.0, both in the constellation Cancer.
The pair will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.
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 | 08h50m10s | 12°48'N | Cancer | -8.1 | 30'45"4 |
| Mercury | 08h50m10s | 13°21'N | Cancer | 3.0 | 11"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 14° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.
The sky on 19 Apr 2024
| The sky on 19 April 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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88% 11 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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Warning
Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.
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
| 30 Jun 2012 | – Mercury at greatest elongation east |
| 16 Aug 2012 | – Mercury at greatest elongation west |
| 18 Aug 2012 | – Mercury at highest altitude in morning sky |
| 26 Oct 2012 | – Mercury at greatest elongation east |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.