The Moon and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within a mere 54.7 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Jupiter, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 23 days old.
From Columbus , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 01:52 (EST) and reaching an altitude of 59° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 07:22.
The Moon will be at mag -11.5; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.1. Both objects will lie in the constellation Cancer.
They 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.
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 | 08h49m30s | 17°14'N | Cancer | -11.5 | 31'27"7 |
| Jupiter | 08h50m50s | 18°05'N | Cancer | -2.1 | 34"8 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 69° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.
The sky on 22 Nov 2024
| The sky on 22 November 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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44% 21 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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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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| 24 Feb 1990 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
| 29 Nov 1990 | – Jupiter enters retrograde motion |
| 28 Jan 1991 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 30 Mar 1991 | – 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.