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 Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within 1°14' of each other. The Moon will be 17 days old.

From Ashburn , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 22:43, when they reach an altitude of 21° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 03:43, 66° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:53, 52° above your south-western 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 -12.4; and Uranus will be at mag 5.7. Both objects will lie in the constellation Aries.

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

A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Uranus 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 02h48m30s 14°28'N Aries -12.4 29'42"5
Uranus 02h46m30s 15°37'N Aries 5.7 3"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 137° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 24 Sep 2021

The sky on 24 September 2021
Sunrise
06:57
Sunset
19:03
Twilight ends
20:32
Twilight begins
05:27

17-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

83%

17 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 09:01 14:21 19:40
Venus 10:42 15:44 20:45
Moon 20:37 03:26 10:25
Mars 07:20 13:17 19:15
Jupiter 17:23 22:36 03:49
Saturn 16:34 21:31 02:28
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

19 Aug 2021  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
04 Nov 2021  –  Uranus at opposition
18 Jan 2022  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
24 Aug 2022  –  Uranus 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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Ashburn

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

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