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 50" to the north of Jupiter. The Moon will be 6 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 20:51 (EDT), 36° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 42 minutes after the Sun at 00:12.

The Moon will be at mag -11.2, and Jupiter at mag -1.9, both in the constellation Leo.

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 10h26m50s 10°55'N Leo -11.2 29'54"8
Jupiter 10h26m50s 10°54'N Leo -1.9 33"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 66° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 16 Aug 2024

The sky on 16 August 2024
Sunrise
06:01
Sunset
19:49
Twilight ends
21:33
Twilight begins
04:17


Waxing Gibbous

88%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:36 13:06 19:35
Venus 07:43 14:13 20:43
Moon 18:09 22:31 02:57
Mars 00:49 08:17 15:46
Jupiter 00:47 08:13 15:40
Saturn 20:50 02:29 08:07
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

26 Apr 1980  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
24 Jan 1981  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
26 Mar 1981  –  Jupiter at opposition
27 May 1981  –  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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