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°13' of each other. The Moon will be 19 days old.

From San Diego , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 00:55, when they reach an altitude of 10° above your south-eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 04:58, 35° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:49, 33° above your southern horizon.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

The Moon will be at mag -12.2; and Saturn will be at mag 0.1. Both objects will lie in the constellation Sagittarius.

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 17h49m50s 18°50'S Sagittarius -12.2 29'31"5
Saturn 17h49m00s 22°03'S Sagittarius 0.1 17"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 119° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 16 Apr 2017

The sky on 16 April 2017
Sunrise
06:15
Sunset
19:19
Twilight ends
20:46
Twilight begins
04:49

19-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

70%

19 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:24 13:05 19:46
Venus 04:40 10:49 16:58
Moon 23:23 04:44 10:04
Mars 07:47 14:44 21:40
Jupiter 18:25 00:14 06:04
Saturn 23:55 04:58 10:01
All times shown in PDT.

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

05 Apr 2017  –  Saturn enters retrograde motion
15 Jun 2017  –  Saturn at opposition
25 Aug 2017  –  Saturn ends retrograde motion
17 Apr 2018  –  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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San Diego

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32.72°N
117.16°W
PDT

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