Close approach of the Moon, Jupiter and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Appulses feed

Tags: Appulse

The Moon, Jupiter and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within 1°19' of each other. The Moon will be 14 days old.

From South El Monte , the trio will be visible between 20:47 and 05:15. They will become accessible at around 20:47, when they rise to an altitude of 7° above your south-eastern horizon. They will reach their highest point in the sky at 01:01, 34° above your southern horizon. They will become inaccessible at around 05:15 when they sink below 7° above your south-western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.6 in Ophiuchus; Jupiter will be at mag -2.5 in Scorpius; and Uranus will be at mag 5.5 in Scorpius.

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 16h24m10s 19°59'S Ophiuchus -12.6 30'24"8
Jupiter 16h18m50s 20°29'S Scorpius -2.5 44"4
Uranus 16h22m30s 21°27'S Scorpius 5.5 3"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 177° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 8 Jun 2025

The sky on 8 June 2025
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
20:01
Twilight ends
21:46
Twilight begins
03:53


Waxing Gibbous

94%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:21 13:39 20:56
Venus 03:16 09:46 16:16
Moon 18:08 23:07 04:01
Mars 10:49 17:32 00:15
Jupiter 06:28 13:39 20:50
Saturn 01:50 07:48 13:46
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

14 Mar 1983  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
28 May 1983  –  Uranus at opposition
13 Aug 1983  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
17 Mar 1984  –  Uranus 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.

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