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 3°40' to the north of Jupiter. The Moon will be 3 days old.

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

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 19:04 (EDT), 13° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 42 minutes after the Sun at 20:29.

The Moon will be at mag -10.3, and Jupiter at mag -1.8, both in the constellation Libra.

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 14h30m50s 10°12'S Libra -10.3 30'37"6
Jupiter 14h30m50s 13°52'S Libra -1.8 31"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 41° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 12 May 2024

The sky on 12 May 2024
Sunrise
05:23
Sunset
19:56
Twilight ends
21:53
Twilight begins
03:26


Waxing Crescent

30%

4 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:33 11:02 17:31
Venus 05:12 12:15 19:18
Moon 08:49 17:00 01:02
Mars 03:43 09:55 16:07
Jupiter 05:43 12:58 20:13
Saturn 02:58 08:37 14:15
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

27 Jun 1982  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
27 Mar 1983  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
27 May 1983  –  Jupiter at opposition
29 Jul 1983  –  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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