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 Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 55.0 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Uranus, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 21 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 00:02, when they reach an altitude of 21° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 05:27, 71° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:39, 71° above your southern 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 -12.1; and Uranus will be at mag 5.6. Both objects will lie in the constellation Taurus.

They will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Uranus 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 05h08m10s 23°50'N Taurus -12.1 29'51"5
Uranus 05h08m20s 22°55'N Taurus 5.6 3"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 107° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 29 Sep 2029

The sky on 29 September 2029
Sunrise
06:44
Sunset
18:37
Twilight ends
20:09
Twilight begins
05:12

21-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

60%

21 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:16 11:38 17:59
Venus 10:42 15:30 20:19
Moon 21:46 05:32 13:19
Mars 11:44 16:24 21:04
Jupiter 08:48 14:13 19:38
Saturn 20:46 03:49 10:52
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

23 Sep 2029  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
08 Dec 2029  –  Uranus at opposition
20 Feb 2030  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
28 Sep 2030  –  Uranus 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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Fairfield

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41.14°N
73.26°W
EDT

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