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°33' to the north of Jupiter. The Moon will be 10 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 be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 16:33 (EDT), 28° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 20:20, 54° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 02:00, when they sink below 7° above your western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.5, and Jupiter at mag -2.8, both in the constellation Pisces.

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 01h17m00s 10°08'N Pisces -12.5 31'21"6
Jupiter 01h17m00s 6°35'N Pisces -2.8 45"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 132° from the Sun, which is in Ophiuchus at this time of year.

The sky on 28 Sep 2024

The sky on 28 September 2024
Sunrise
06:36
Sunset
18:30
Twilight ends
20:04
Twilight begins
05:01


Waning Crescent

8%

25 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:26 12:29 18:31
Venus 09:17 14:28 19:39
Moon 02:14 09:46 17:05
Mars 23:35 07:11 14:47
Jupiter 22:01 05:33 13:05
Saturn 17:43 23:15 04:48
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

18 Oct 1987  –  Jupiter at opposition
15 Dec 1987  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
24 Sep 1988  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
22 Nov 1988  –  Jupiter at opposition

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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