Conjunction of the Moon and Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


The Moon and Jupiter will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 24' to the south of Jupiter. The Moon will be 10 days old.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From South El Monte , the pair will become visible at around 20:23 (PDT), 52° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 01:46.

The Moon will be at mag -12.1, and Jupiter at mag -2.1, both in the constellation Virgo.

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 12h35m20s 2°43'S Virgo -12.1 30'31"0
Jupiter 12h35m20s 2°19'S Virgo -2.1 37"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 104° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 24 Aug 2025

The sky on 24 August 2025
Sunrise
06:17
Sunset
19:27
Twilight ends
20:56
Twilight begins
04:48


Waxing Crescent

3%

1 day old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:56 11:46 18:37
Venus 03:41 10:41 17:42
Moon 07:43 14:03 20:15
Mars 09:27 15:19 21:10
Jupiter 02:41 09:49 16:57
Saturn 20:48 02:44 08:41
All times shown in PDT.

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

05 Jun 2005  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
04 Mar 2006  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
04 May 2006  –  Jupiter at opposition
06 Jul 2006  –  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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