The Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within 1°20' of each other. The Moon will be 15 days old.
From Cambridge , the pair will be visible between 18:18 and 05:15. They will become accessible at around 18:18, when they rise to an altitude of 20° above your eastern horizon. They will reach their highest point in the sky at 23:47, 70° above your southern horizon. They will become inaccessible at around 05:15 when they sink below 20° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.6; and Uranus will be at mag 5.5. 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 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 | 05h18m40s | 21°51'N | Taurus | -12.6 | 29'23"4 |
| Uranus | 05h18m40s | 23°11'N | Taurus | 5.5 | 3"8 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 177° from the Sun, which is in Ophiuchus at this time of year.
The sky on 9 Dec 2030
| The sky on 9 December 2030 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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99% 14 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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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
| 28 Sep 2030 | – Uranus enters retrograde motion |
| 12 Dec 2030 | – Uranus at opposition |
| 25 Feb 2031 | – Uranus ends retrograde motion |
| 02 Oct 2031 | – 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.