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 27' to the south 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 South El Monte , the pair will become visible at around 19:56 (PDT), 14° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 33 minutes after the Sun at 21:13.

The Moon will be at mag -8.9, and Jupiter at mag -2.0, both in the constellation Taurus.

The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also 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 04h03m30s 19°39'N Taurus -8.9 32'21"1
Jupiter 04h03m30s 20°07'N Taurus -2.0 32"2

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 19° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 12 Sep 2025

The sky on 12 September 2025
Sunrise
06:30
Sunset
19:02
Twilight ends
20:27
Twilight begins
05:05


Waning Gibbous

65%

20 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:28 12:47 19:05
Venus 04:15 11:00 17:44
Moon 21:29 04:44 12:09
Mars 09:11 14:49 20:28
Jupiter 01:42 08:49 15:55
Saturn 19:30 01:25 07:20
All times shown in PDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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

10 Jan 1965  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
19 Oct 1965  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
18 Dec 1965  –  Jupiter at opposition
14 Feb 1966  –  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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