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 10.7 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 6 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will become visible at around 20:30 (EST), 39° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 00:12.

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 -10.9; and Uranus will be at mag 5.7. Both objects will lie in the constellation Taurus.

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 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 04h54m40s 22°49'N Taurus -10.9 29'30"6
Uranus 04h54m40s 22°38'N Taurus 5.7 3"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 57° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 7 Apr 2030

The sky on 7 April 2030
Sunrise
06:24
Sunset
19:23
Twilight ends
21:00
Twilight begins
04:47

5-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

26%

5 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:56 13:58 21:00
Venus 04:39 10:05 15:30
Moon 08:53 16:28 00:04
Mars 06:55 13:37 20:19
Jupiter 22:30 03:27 08:24
Saturn 08:08 15:12 22:15
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

20 Feb 2030  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
28 Sep 2030  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
12 Dec 2030  –  Uranus at opposition
25 Feb 2031  –  Uranus ends 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
EST

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