The Moon and Neptune will make a close approach, passing within a mere 14.5 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 26 days old.
From Los Angeles however, the
pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 10° above the horizon at dawn.
The Moon will be at mag -10.7; and Neptune will be at mag 7.9. Both objects will lie in the constellation Pisces.
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 | 23h57m30s | 1°51’S | Pisces | -10.7 | 32’48″6 |
| Neptune | 23h57m10s | 1°38’S | Pisces | 7.9 | 2″2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The
pair will be at an angular separation of
45° from the Sun, which is in Aries at
this time of year.
The sky on 4 May 2024
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.
