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 Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 13.0 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Uranus, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 12 days old.

From Jacksonville , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 21:32 (EDT), 46° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 22:16, 47° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 02:03, when they sink below 20° above your south-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 -12.3; and Uranus will be at mag 5.4. Both objects will lie in the constellation Virgo.

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 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 14h06m10s 12°29'S Virgo -12.3 29'34"2
Uranus 14h06m30s 12°17'S Virgo 5.4 3"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 134° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 3 Jul 2024

The sky on 3 July 2024
Sunrise
06:26
Sunset
20:32
Twilight ends
22:08
Twilight begins
04:49

27-day old moon
Waning Crescent

2%

27 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:58 14:54 21:50
Venus 07:03 14:03 21:04
Moon 03:57 11:21 18:50
Mars 02:57 09:39 16:21
Jupiter 04:10 11:05 18:00
Saturn 00:13 06:01 11:50
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

25 Apr 2060  –  Uranus at opposition
11 Jul 2060  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
15 Feb 2061  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
30 Apr 2061  –  Uranus at opposition

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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30.33°N
81.66°W
EDT

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