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 4°45' to the north of Jupiter. The Moon will be 2 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 18:16 (EDT), 25° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 41 minutes after the Sun at 20:39.

The Moon will be at mag -10.1, and Jupiter at mag -2.1, both in the constellation Aries.

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 02h03m20s 16°14'N Aries -10.1 32'11"2
Jupiter 02h03m20s 11°29'N Aries -2.1 33"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 34° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 10 Oct 2024

The sky on 10 October 2024
Sunrise
06:49
Sunset
18:09
Twilight ends
19:43
Twilight begins
05:15


Waxing Gibbous

58%

8 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:27 12:56 18:25
Venus 09:47 14:38 19:29
Moon 14:36 18:53 23:13
Mars 23:16 06:50 14:24
Jupiter 21:15 04:47 12:19
Saturn 16:54 22:25 03:57
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

15 Dec 1987  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
24 Sep 1988  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
22 Nov 1988  –  Jupiter at opposition
20 Jan 1989  –  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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