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°53' of each other. The Moon will be 16 days old.

From Asheville , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 19:47, when they reach an altitude of 7° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 01:32, 63° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 06:57, 11° above your western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.8 in Sextans; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.5 in Leo.

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 10h42m20s 3°19'N Sextans -12.8 33'06"5
Jupiter 10h52m10s 8°40'N Leo -2.5 43"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 168° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 20 Oct 2025

The sky on 20 October 2025
Sunrise
07:38
Sunset
18:47
Twilight ends
20:13
Twilight begins
06:13


Waning Crescent

0%

29 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 09:33 14:37 19:40
Venus 06:07 12:04 18:02
Moon 06:53 12:35 18:08
Mars 09:28 14:38 19:48
Jupiter 00:08 07:17 14:25
Saturn 17:28 23:20 05:12
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

30 Dec 1991  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
28 Feb 1992  –  Jupiter at opposition
30 Apr 1992  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
28 Jan 1993  –  Jupiter enters 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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