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 2°19' of each other. The Moon will be 13 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 16:49 (EST), 11° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 22:51, 67° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 05:08, when they sink below 9° 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 -12.5; and Saturn will be at mag -0.4. Both objects will lie in the constellation Taurus.

They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will 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 04h09m00s 21°14'N Taurus -12.5 29'26"8
Saturn 04h10m00s 18°55'N Taurus -0.4 20"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 167° from the Sun, which is in Ophiuchus at this time of year.

The sky on 8 Dec 2030

The sky on 8 December 2030
Sunrise
07:02
Sunset
16:23
Twilight ends
18:02
Twilight begins
05:23

13-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

99%

13 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:14 12:46 17:19
Venus 08:04 12:36 17:07
Moon 15:38 23:07 06:38
Mars 01:25 07:21 13:16
Jupiter 06:32 11:16 15:59
Saturn 15:38 22:51 06:04
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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05 Oct 2031  –  Saturn enters retrograde motion
11 Dec 2031  –  Saturn at opposition

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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Longitude:
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41.14°N
73.26°W
EST

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