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 Collinder 50

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon and Collinder 50 will make a close approach, passing within 1°15' of each other. The Moon will be 12 days old.

From Jacksonville , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 18:13 (EST), 35° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 22:02, 75° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 03:43, when they sink below 11° 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 -12.7; and Collinder 50 will be at mag 1.0. 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.

A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Collinder 50 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 04h26m20s 17°15'N Taurus -12.7 32'23"7
Collinder 50 04h27m00s 16°00'N Taurus 1.0 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 145° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 2 Jan 2034

The sky on 2 January 2034
Sunrise
07:20
Sunset
17:36
Twilight ends
19:02
Twilight begins
05:54

12-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

94%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:53 12:55 17:56
Venus 07:23 12:27 17:31
Moon 15:59 22:55 05:52
Mars 11:14 17:09 23:03
Jupiter 10:26 16:03 21:40
Saturn 17:58 00:55 07:53
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.

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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Jacksonville

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Longitude:
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30.33°N
81.66°W
EST

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