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 18' to the north of Jupiter. The Moon will be 27 days old.

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

From Jacksonville , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 05:09 (EDT) – 2 hours and 23 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 26° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 07:17.

The Moon will be at mag -9.9, and Jupiter at mag -1.7, both in the constellation Virgo.

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 11h44m40s 3°07'N Virgo -9.9 31'56"2
Jupiter 11h44m40s 2°48'N Virgo -1.7 30"8

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 31° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 17 Jul 2024

The sky on 17 July 2024
Sunrise
06:33
Sunset
20:28
Twilight ends
22:02
Twilight begins
04:59


Waxing Gibbous

85%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:41 15:18 21:55
Venus 07:29 14:21 21:12
Moon 17:20 22:24 03:26
Mars 02:35 09:24 16:13
Jupiter 03:26 10:22 17:18
Saturn 23:18 05:06 10:53
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

21 Apr 1968  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
20 Jan 1969  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
21 Mar 1969  –  Jupiter at opposition
23 May 1969  –  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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