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 a mere 39.3 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Uranus, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 9 days old.

From San Diego , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:56 (PDT), 58° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 19:52, 73° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 00:50, when they sink below 21° above your 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 a little too widely separated to fit comfortably 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 02h48m40s 16°32'N Aries -12.4 30'21"3
Uranus 02h49m50s 15°56'N Aries 5.7 3"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 123° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 1 Jan 2023

The sky on 1 January 2023
Sunrise
06:48
Sunset
16:52
Twilight ends
18:21
Twilight begins
05:20

9-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

81%

9 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:33 12:41 17:49
Venus 08:02 13:05 18:08
Moon 13:06 20:03 03:08
Mars 14:16 21:27 04:39
Jupiter 11:07 17:08 23:09
Saturn 09:20 14:43 20:05
All times shown in PST.

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

09 Nov 2022  –  Uranus at opposition
22 Jan 2023  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
28 Aug 2023  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
13 Nov 2023  –  Uranus at opposition

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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Longitude:
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32.72°N
117.16°W
PDT

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