The Moon and Neptune will make a close approach, passing within a mere 29.9 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Neptune, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 20 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 22:32 (EST) and reaching an altitude of 45° above the southern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 04:06.

The Moon will be at mag -12.4; and Neptune will be at mag 7.8. Both objects will lie in the constellation Pisces.

They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Neptune around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:

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

The sky on 25 Jul 2024

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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