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 4°40' to the south of Jupiter. The Moon will be 11 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 evening sky, becoming accessible around 18:47 (EDT), 53° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 21:26, 80° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 03:37, when they sink below 7° above your western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.4, and Jupiter at mag -2.5, both in the constellation Cancer.

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 08h08m10s 16°12'N Cancer -12.4 29'27"3
Jupiter 08h08m10s 20°53'N Cancer -2.5 42"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 132° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 11 May 2025

The sky on 11 May 2025
Sunrise
06:32
Sunset
20:10
Twilight ends
21:41
Twilight begins
05:02


Waxing Gibbous

99%

14 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:42 12:08 18:34
Venus 04:25 10:34 16:42
Moon 18:40 00:10 05:35
Mars 12:09 18:59 01:50
Jupiter 08:37 15:37 22:38
Saturn 04:09 10:05 16:02
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

24 Jan 1979  –  Jupiter at opposition
25 Mar 1979  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
26 Dec 1979  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
24 Feb 1980  –  Jupiter at opposition

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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