As the Moon swells in brightness toward the middle of the sky, it makes its monthly swing past the outer planets.
See the end note about enlarging illustrations.
We show the Moon as shifted by parallax. That is, our location for the picture is in Earth’s northern hemisphere, so the Moon appears a degree or so south of where it would be as seen from Earth’s center (its geocentric position). But the arrows showing the Moon’s flight from day to day are as seen from the center of the Earth, so that you can sense the difference made by parallax.
The Moon’s conjunctions with the planets are:
Oct. 24 Saturn
Oct. 26 Neptune
Oct. 29 Jupiter
Oct. 30 Uranus
And in the course of this, it will pass through its full position on Oct. 28, north of the point we’ve marked as the “anti-Sun.” The result is a lunar eclipse: a slight partial one, the Moon dipping only a little way into the umbra or total shadow. As shown in the two pages about this eclipse in Astronomical Calendar 2023.
The brief central exciting moment, when the sharp edge of our home planet’s huge shadow is suddenly seen on the southern end of the full Moon, starts just before 20h Universal Time. So the Moon and its company of planets will be above the southeastern horizon for Britain, but low on or below it for North America.
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ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format. You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor. One way: right-click, and choose “View image” or “Open image in new tab”, then enlarge. Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it. On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers). Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.
Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after publishing it. If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version. Or you can click ‘Refresh’ to get the latest version.