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 4.7 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 10 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:04 (EDT), 30° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 19:20, 38° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 23:42, when they sink below 11° above your south-western horizon.

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The Moon will be at mag -12.4; 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 22h58m00s 8°48'S Aquarius -12.4 32'24"7
Saturn 22h58m10s 8°52'S Aquarius 0.7 18"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 113° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.

The sky on 10 Nov 2024

The sky on 10 November 2024
Sunrise
06:27
Sunset
16:26
Twilight ends
18:03
Twilight begins
04:50

9-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

75%

9 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:29 12:55 17:20
Venus 09:55 14:15 18:35
Moon 13:45 19:16 01:00
Mars 21:14 04:41 12:09
Jupiter 18:06 01:38 09:09
Saturn 13:49 19:20 00:50
All times shown in EST.

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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06 May 2025  –  Equinox on Saturn

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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Cambridge

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42.38°N
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