The Moon and Collinder 50 will make a close approach, passing within a mere 47.9 arcminutes of each other. The Moon will be 8 days old.
From Columbus , the pair will become visible at around 18:54 (EST), 65° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 01:42.
The Moon will be at mag -12.0; and Collinder 50 will be at mag 1.0. Both objects will lie in the constellation Taurus.
They will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably within the field of view of a telescope, but will 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 | 04h26m20s | 16°46'N | Taurus | -12.0 | 32'04"4 |
| 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 92° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.
The sky on 23 Feb 2018
| The sky on 23 February 2018 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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58% 8 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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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.