The Moon, Jupiter and Saturn will make a close approach, passing within 2°55' of each other. The Moon will be 18 days old.
From Cambridge , the trio will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 21:09, when they reach an altitude of 7° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 02:16, 45° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 06:14, 20° above your south-western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.5; Jupiter will be at mag -2.4; and Saturn will be at mag 0.5. The trio will lie in the constellation Virgo.
They 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.
At around the same time, the trio will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Jupiter around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the trio at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 12h41m00s | 0°25'N | Virgo | -12.5 | 29'46"0 |
| Jupiter | 12h37m00s | 2°19'S | Virgo | -2.4 | 41"7 |
| Saturn | 12h37m10s | 1°12'S | Virgo | 0.5 | 19"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 144° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.
The sky on 8 May 2024
| The sky on 8 May 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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2% 30 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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 1981 | – Jupiter enters retrograde motion |
| 26 Mar 1981 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 27 May 1981 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
| 24 Feb 1982 | – Jupiter enters 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.