In our What’s Up segment this week, we talked about the conjunction between the Moon and Uranus. This event is occurring on Monday, February 7. If you head out just after sunset, you should be able to find the Moon and about two degrees (two finger-widths) away from it will be the very faint dot that is Uranus. You’ll need to use a small to a medium telescope to really be able to make out the blueish-green dot to the right of the Moon.

The eleventh, the date we falsely gave, snuck in from a story we didn’t cover. The Moon is going to be at apogee – its farthest point from Earth – at 03:00 UTC on February 11, which is in the mid-to-late-evening of the tenth, depending on what timezone you’re in. At that time, the Moon will be 404,897 kilometers away from the Earth, which works out to 1.35 light seconds.

We’re sorry for the date confusion, but this correction let us get you more science.

More Information

Lunar Perigee and Apogee (timeanddate)