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°28' of each other. The Moon will be 20 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 01:46, when they reach an altitude of 10° above your south-eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 05:16, 26° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:59, 25° above your southern horizon.

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The Moon will be at mag -12.2; and Saturn will be at mag 0.2. Both objects will lie in the constellation Ophiuchus.

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 17h02m00s 17°29'S Ophiuchus -12.2 29'56"1
Saturn 17h00m40s 20°58'S Ophiuchus 0.2 17"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 112° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 29 Mar 2016

The sky on 29 March 2016
Sunrise
06:29
Sunset
19:07
Twilight ends
20:43
Twilight begins
04:53

20-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

64%

20 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:47 13:10 19:34
Venus 05:58 11:43 17:29
Moon 23:58 05:04 10:07
Mars 23:51 04:35 09:19
Jupiter 16:52 23:21 05:50
Saturn 00:34 05:16 09:57
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

25 Mar 2016  –  Saturn enters retrograde motion
03 Jun 2016  –  Saturn at opposition
13 Aug 2016  –  Saturn ends retrograde motion
06 Apr 2017  –  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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Longitude:
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42.38°N
71.11°W
EDT

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