The Moon and Collinder 50 will make a close approach, passing within a mere 24.0 arcminutes of each other. The Moon will be 20 days old.
From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 23:15, when they reach an altitude of 11° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 05:08, 63° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:49, 62° above your southern horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.3; and Collinder 50 will be at mag 1.0. Both objects will lie in the constellation Taurus.
They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Collinder 50 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 | 04h26m40s | 16°23'N | Taurus | -12.3 | 32'26"9 |
| Collinder 50 | 04h27m00s | 16°00'N | Taurus | 1.0 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 111° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.
The sky on 21 Sep 2016
| The sky on 21 September 2016 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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62% 20 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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.
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.