The Moon and Jupiter will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 21' to the south of Jupiter. The Moon will be 24 days old.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 02:47 (EDT) – 2 hours and 42 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 24° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:10.
The Moon will be at mag -11.4, and Jupiter at mag -2.3, both in the constellation Aquarius.
The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon 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 |
| The Moon | 23h36m20s | 4°05'S | Aquarius | -11.4 | 32'28"4 |
| Jupiter | 23h36m20s | 3°44'S | Aquarius | -2.3 | 36"3 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 66° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.
The sky on 17 Jul 2024
| The sky on 17 July 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
85% 12 days old |
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
| 08 Oct 1997 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
| 17 Jul 1998 | – Jupiter enters retrograde motion |
| 15 Sep 1998 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 13 Nov 1998 | – 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.