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 6.0 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 12 days old.

From Washington , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 19:29 (MDT), 23° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 22:58, 44° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 03:33, when they sink below 11° 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 -12.7; and Saturn will be at mag 0.6. 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 23h01m10s 8°31'S Aquarius -12.7 32'59"5
Saturn 23h01m20s 8°36'S Aquarius 0.6 18"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 141° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 14 Oct 2024

The sky on 14 October 2024
Sunrise
07:38
Sunset
18:57
Twilight ends
20:24
Twilight begins
06:12

12-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

92%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:28 13:54 19:20
Venus 10:33 15:31 20:30
Moon 17:32 23:22 05:24
Mars 00:15 07:32 14:49
Jupiter 22:04 05:20 12:36
Saturn 17:21 22:58 04:35
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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Washington

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37.13°N
113.51°W
MDT

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