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 3°23' of each other. The Moon will be 23 days old.

From Ashburn , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 01:34, when they reach an altitude of 10° above your south-eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 05:52, 38° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 06:41, 36° above your southern horizon.

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The Moon will be at mag -12.1; and Saturn will be at mag 0.3. Both objects will lie in the constellation Libra.

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

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 14h34m40s 16°07'S Libra -12.1 32'00"7
Saturn 14h37m50s 12°49'S Libra 0.3 17"1

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 93° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 29 Mar 2024

The sky on 29 March 2024
Sunrise
06:56
Sunset
19:30
Twilight ends
21:01
Twilight begins
05:25

19-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

80%

19 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:25 14:12 20:58
Venus 06:23 12:11 17:59
Moon 23:04 04:01 08:52
Mars 05:41 11:08 16:35
Jupiter 08:39 15:36 22:33
Saturn 06:03 11:39 17:15
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

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18 Feb 2013  –  Saturn enters retrograde motion
28 Apr 2013  –  Saturn at opposition
08 Jul 2013  –  Saturn 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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Ashburn

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Longitude:
Timezone:

39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

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