The Moon, Jupiter and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 5°51' of each other. The Moon will be 5 days old.
From Cambridge , the trio will become visible at around 18:06 (EDT), 57° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 23:35.
The Moon will be at mag -11.5; Jupiter will be at mag -2.2; and Mars will be at mag 1.1. The trio 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 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 | 03h47m40s | 25°21'N | Taurus | -11.5 | 32'03"2 |
| Jupiter | 03h53m20s | 19°38'N | Taurus | -2.2 | 36"1 |
| Mars | 03h53m00s | 21°34'N | Taurus | 1.1 | 5"6 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 68° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.
The sky on 17 Jul 2024
| The sky on 17 July 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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89% 12 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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.
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| 27 Dec 1989 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 24 Feb 1990 | – 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.