The Moon and Jupiter will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 5°02' to the north 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 Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 16:54 (EDT), 48° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 18:59, 59° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 00:53, when they sink below 7° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.1 in the constellation Aries, and Jupiter at mag -2.6 in the neighbouring constellation of Pisces.
The pair 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.
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 | 01h54m30s | 15°28'N | Aries | -12.1 | 29'31"4 |
| Jupiter | 01h54m30s | 10°26'N | Pisces | -2.6 | 42"1 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 110° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.
The sky on 12 May 2024
| The sky on 12 May 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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24% 4 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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.
Related news
| 25 Dec 2011 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
| 04 Oct 2012 | – Jupiter enters retrograde motion |
| 02 Dec 2012 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 30 Jan 2013 | – 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.