The Moon and Neptune will make a close approach, passing within a mere 15.5 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Neptune, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 25 days old.
From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 01:46 (EDT) – 3 hours and 40 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 23° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 04:05.
The Moon will be at mag -10.7; and Neptune will be at mag 7.9. Both objects will lie in the constellation Taurus.
They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible through a pair of binoculars.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Neptune 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 | 04h45m30s | 20°33'N | Taurus | -10.7 | 29'28"0 |
| Neptune | 04h45m20s | 20°48'N | Taurus | 7.9 | 2"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 51° from the Sun, which is in Cancer at this time of year.
The sky on 4 Jul 2024
| The sky on 4 July 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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1% 28 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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.
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Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.