The Moon and M45 will make a close approach, passing within 1°06' of each other. The Moon will be 20 days old.
From Los Angeles , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 23:39, when they reach an altitude of 12° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 05:43, 80° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:48, 79° above your southern horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.1; and M45 will be at mag 1.3. Both objects will lie in the constellation Taurus.
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.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and M45 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 | 03h48m50s | 23°02'N | Taurus | -12.1 | 31'03"2 |
| M45 | 03h47m30s | 24°06'N | Taurus | 1.3 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 102° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.
The sky on 5 Sep 2023
| The sky on 5 September 2023 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
55% 20 days old |
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.
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.