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 5°58' of each other. The Moon will be 14 days old.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible between 17:21 and 05:48. They will become accessible at around 17:21, when they rise to an altitude of 7° above your eastern horizon. They will reach their highest point in the sky at 23:35, 75° above your southern horizon. They will become inaccessible at around 05:48 when they sink below 7° above your western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.7; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.8. Both objects will lie in the constellation Taurus.

They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.

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 03h51m10s 25°12'N Taurus -12.7 32'04"8
Jupiter 03h56m50s 19°22'N Taurus -2.8 47"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 175° from the Sun, which is in Scorpius at this time of year.

The sky on 9 Nov 2025

The sky on 9 November 2025
Sunrise
06:16
Sunset
16:51
Twilight ends
18:17
Twilight begins
04:50


Waning Gibbous

74%

19 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:57 12:51 17:45
Venus 05:09 10:41 16:13
Moon 19:52 03:30 11:03
Mars 07:38 12:40 17:42
Jupiter 21:19 04:23 11:27
Saturn 14:28 20:19 02:11
All times shown in PST.

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

22 Nov 1988  –  Jupiter at opposition
19 Jan 1989  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
28 Oct 1989  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
27 Dec 1989  –  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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