The Moon and Saturn will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 22' to the south of Saturn. The Moon will be 23 days old.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From San Diego , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 01:44 (PST) – 3 hours and 55 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 37° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:01.
The Moon will be at mag -11.8, and Saturn at mag 0.9, both in the constellation Aquarius.
The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Saturn around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:
Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
The Moon | 23h20m00s | 6°40'S | Aquarius | -11.8 | 32'19"3 |
Saturn | 23h20m00s | 6°18'S | Aquarius | 0.9 | 16"9 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 81° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.
The sky on 31 May 2024
The sky on 31 May 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
37% 23 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.
Related news
04 Nov 2023 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
29 Jun 2024 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
07 Sep 2024 | – Saturn at opposition |
15 Nov 2024 | – Saturn ends 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.