Close approach of the Moon and Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Appulses feed

Tags: Appulse

The Moon and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within a mere 32.2 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Jupiter, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 16 days old.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 22:41, when they reach an altitude of 7° above your south-eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 02:57, 34° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:48, 21° above your south-western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.5; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.5. Both objects will lie in the constellation Ophiuchus.

They will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably 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 pair 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 pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
The Moon 16h32m30s 20°26'S Ophiuchus -12.5 30'28"0
Jupiter 16h32m00s 20°57'S Ophiuchus -2.5 43"1

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 149° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 7 Jun 2025

The sky on 7 June 2025
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
20:01
Twilight ends
21:45
Twilight begins
03:54


Waxing Gibbous

92%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:16 13:34 20:51
Venus 03:17 09:46 16:15
Moon 17:09 22:21 03:28
Mars 10:50 17:34 00:17
Jupiter 06:31 13:42 20:53
Saturn 01:54 07:52 13:50
All times shown in PDT.

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 Mar 1983  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
27 May 1983  –  Jupiter at opposition
28 Jul 1983  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
29 Apr 1984  –  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.

Share