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 5°16' of each other. The Moon will be 19 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 21:40, when they reach an altitude of 9° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 03:48, 64° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 06:08, 50° above your south-western horizon.

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The Moon will be at mag -12.3 in Aries; and Saturn will be at mag -0.2 in Taurus.

They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.

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 03h25m50s 21°40'N Aries -12.3 29'29"5
Saturn 03h29m50s 16°28'N Taurus -0.2 19"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 129° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 27 Sep 2029

The sky on 27 September 2029
Sunrise
06:34
Sunset
18:32
Twilight ends
20:06
Twilight begins
05:00

19-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

77%

19 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:10 11:32 17:54
Venus 10:32 15:21 20:09
Moon 20:08 03:45 11:28
Mars 11:40 16:17 20:55
Jupiter 08:47 14:11 19:35
Saturn 20:42 03:48 10:54
All times shown in EDT.

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

06 Sep 2029  –  Saturn enters retrograde motion
13 Nov 2029  –  Saturn at opposition
18 Jan 2030  –  Saturn ends retrograde motion
20 Sep 2030  –  Saturn enters 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.

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Cambridge

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42.38°N
71.11°W
EDT

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