The Moon and Saturn will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 42' to the north of Saturn. The Moon will be 3 days old.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From Jacksonville , the pair will become visible at around 20:24 (EST), 25° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 31 minutes after the Sun at 22:29.
The Moon will be at mag -9.8, and Saturn at mag -0.0, both in the constellation Taurus.
The pair will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Saturn around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 04h21m40s | 20°38'N | Taurus | -9.8 | 29'48"6 |
| Saturn | 04h21m40s | 19°56'N | Taurus | -0.0 | 16"8 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 33° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.
The sky on 24 Apr 2031
| The sky on 24 April 2031 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
11% 3 days old |
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
| 01 Feb 2031 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 05 Oct 2031 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 11 Dec 2031 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 16 Feb 2032 | – Saturn 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.