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 Saturn

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon and Saturn will make a close approach, passing within a mere 20.8 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Saturn, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 19 days old.

From Washington , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 00:02, when they reach an altitude of 11° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 04:44, 46° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:52, 43° 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 -12.5; and Saturn will be at mag 0.7. Both objects will lie in the constellation Aquarius.

They 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.

At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.

A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Saturn 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 23h20m30s 6°07'S Aquarius -12.5 32'42"5
Saturn 23h21m10s 6°25'S Aquarius 0.7 18"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 133° from the Sun, which is in Cancer at this time of year.

The sky on 24 Jul 2024

The sky on 24 July 2024
Sunrise
06:30
Sunset
20:47
Twilight ends
22:32
Twilight begins
04:44

19-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

79%

19 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:47 15:23 21:58
Venus 07:37 14:36 21:34
Moon 22:42 04:21 10:11
Mars 02:17 09:24 16:31
Jupiter 02:54 10:08 17:21
Saturn 23:01 04:44 10:28
All times shown in MDT.

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.

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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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37.13°N
113.51°W
MDT

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