© NASA/Voyager 2

Neptune ends retrograde motion

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Outer Planets feed

Objects: Neptune
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The sky at

Neptune will reach the end of its retrograde motion, ending its westward movement through the constellations and returning to more usual eastward motion instead. This reversal of direction is a phenomenon that all the solar system's outer planets periodically undergo, a few months after they pass opposition.

This motion was known to ancient observers, and it troubled them as they could not reconcile it with models in which the planets moved in uniform circular orbits around the Earth, as they believed.

The retrograde motion is caused by the Earth's own motion around the Sun. As the Earth circles the Sun, our perspective changes, and this causes the apparent positions of objects to move from side-to-side in the sky with a one-year period. This nodding motion is super-imposed on the planet's long-term eastward motion through the constellations.

The diagram below illustrates this. The grey dashed arrow shows the Earth's sight-line to the planet, and the diagram on the right shows the planet's apparently movement across the sky as seen from the Earth:


The retrograde motion of a planet in the outer solar system. Not drawn to scale.

2036–2037 apparition of Neptune

29 Jul 2036 – Neptune enters retrograde motion
17 Oct 2036 – Neptune at opposition
03 Jan 2037 – Neptune ends retrograde motion

Observing Neptune

Neptune leaves retrograde motion as its 2036–2037 apparition comes to an end, although it will remain visible for some weeks in the dusk sky.

Its celestial coordinates as it leaves retrograde motion will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Neptune 01h29m40s 7°33'N Pisces 7.9 2.3"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Seattle , it will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:50 (PDT), 48° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then reach its highest point in the sky at 18:42, 49° above your southern horizon. It will continue to be observable until around 23:04, when it sinks below 21° 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.

Over the following weeks, Neptune will reach its highest point in the sky four minutes earlier each night, gradually disappearing into evening twilight.

The sky on 28 Mar 2024

The sky on 28 March 2024
Sunrise
06:52
Sunset
19:33
Twilight ends
21:20
Twilight begins
05:06

18-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

82%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:12 14:13 21:14
Venus 06:28 12:10 17:51
Moon 22:29 03:20 08:01
Mars 05:54 11:08 16:22
Jupiter 08:21 15:38 22:55
Saturn 06:15 11:42 17:09
All times shown in PDT.

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

03 Jan 2037  –  Neptune ends retrograde motion
01 Aug 2037  –  Neptune enters retrograde motion
20 Oct 2037  –  Neptune at opposition
05 Jan 2038  –  Neptune ends retrograde motion

Image credit

© NASA/Voyager 2

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