Conjunction of the Moon and Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


The Moon and Jupiter will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 1°14' to the north of Jupiter. The Moon will be 2 days old.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From Fairfield , the pair will become visible at around 17:03 (EDT), 14° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 57 minutes after the Sun at 18:41.

The Moon will be at mag -9.5, and Jupiter at mag -2.0, both in the constellation Capricornus.

The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Jupiter around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
The Moon 21h01m10s 16°24'S Capricornus -9.5 32'55"4
Jupiter 21h01m10s 17°39'S Capricornus -2.0 32"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 24° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 28 Sep 2024

The sky on 28 September 2024
Sunrise
06:44
Sunset
18:39
Twilight ends
20:11
Twilight begins
05:12


Waning Crescent

9%

25 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:35 12:37 18:40
Venus 09:23 14:37 19:50
Moon 02:26 09:54 17:11
Mars 23:48 07:19 14:51
Jupiter 22:14 05:42 13:10
Saturn 17:50 23:24 04:58
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

23 Sep 1961  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
02 Jul 1962  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
31 Aug 1962  –  Jupiter at opposition
29 Oct 1962  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion

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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