Conjunction of Venus and Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and Jupiter will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 50' to the north of Jupiter.

From Cambridge however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 4° above the horizon at dusk.

Venus will be at mag -3.9, and Jupiter at mag -1.9, both in the constellation Taurus.

The pair will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably 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 Venus 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
Venus 04h53m40s 22°58'N Taurus -3.9 9"9
Jupiter 04h53m40s 22°07'N Taurus -1.9 31"8

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 12° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 9 Oct 2024

The sky on 9 October 2024
Sunrise
06:48
Sunset
18:11
Twilight ends
19:44
Twilight begins
05:14


Waxing Crescent

47%

7 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:22 12:54 18:26
Venus 09:44 14:37 19:30
Moon 13:46 17:56 22:07
Mars 23:18 06:52 14:26
Jupiter 21:19 04:51 12:23
Saturn 16:58 22:30 04:01
All times shown in EDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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

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28 Oct 1989  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
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.

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