Watch the Moon meet Saturn in the night sky on March 19
The Moon meets Saturn on Sunday (March 19), with the two celestial bodies sharing the same right ascension process, an arrangement called a conjunction.
The thin sliver of the moon, which will be in its waning crescent phase, will pass south of Saturn according to 3°35′ In heaven. (opens in new tab) Both the moon and the gas giant, the second largest planet in the solar system, are in the constellation Aquarius during the constellation.
The moon has a magnitude of -9.8, with the minus prefix indicating a particularly bright object in the sky, while Saturn has a magnitude of 0.8. The best time to see the conjunction is around 6:30 a.m. local time, and skygazers need a clear horizon and clear skies to spot the pair at dawn. Just be sure to move your optics away from the horizon before the sun comes up!
Related: Night Sky, March 2023: What You Can See Tonight [maps]
During conjunction, the Moon and Saturn are still too far apart to be seen together with a telescope. Skywatchers could see the conjunction with binoculars.
According to In the Sky (opens in new tab), the conjunction will be visible from New York City at around 6:02 a.m. EDT (1002 GMT), shortly after the Moon and Saturn rise above the horizon. The conjunction will remain visible until around 4:42 p.m. EDT (2042 GMT), when the moon sets. This means that skygazers wishing to see the conjunction should take precautions related to daytime astronomy, particularly not looking directly at the Sun, either through optics or with the naked eye.
While the Moon dominates Saturn in the night sky in magnitude at 32’55″7 versus Saturn’s 15″5 during conjunction, conditions in the real solar system could hardly be more different.
At over 72,000 miles (116,000 km) across, Saturn is so large that NASA says it would take nine Earths to orbit it at the gas giant’s equator. That means if Earth were the size of a nickel, Saturn would be the size of a volleyball. The diameter of the moon, on the other hand, is only 3,475 kilometers, which is a quarter of the size of the earth. That means it would take 36 moons to orbit Saturn.
Of course, Saturn is no stranger to the moons, as it has been at least 83 own! In addition, the gas giant has another 20 moons waiting to be confirmed. Saturn’s largest moon is the giant moon Titan, larger than the planet Mercury. Titan is the largest of at least 150 known moons in the Solar System, dwarfing Earth’s moon at about 5,150 kilometers across.
This measurement may seem somewhat controversial given that Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is actually about 5,270 kilometers in diameter. Titan beats Ganymede as the largest moon because that measurement only accounts for its solid body and not its atmosphere, which stretches for hundreds of miles!
If you’re hoping to catch a glimpse of the Moon or Saturn during conjunction, our guide to them is best telescopes will help. If you want to catch the two celestial objects together, our guide has them best binoculars is a great place to start.
If you want to take photos of the night sky in general, check out our guide how to photograph the moonas well as ours The best cameras for astrophotography And The best lenses for astrophotography.
Editor’s note: If you photograph Saturn or the Moon and would like to share your photos with Space.com readers, send your photos, comments, and your name and location to [email protected]
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