The Moon and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within a mere 37.4 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 22 days old.
From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 23:11 (EDT) and reaching an altitude of 69° above the southern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:07.
The Moon will be at mag -11.8; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.4. Both objects will lie in the constellation Taurus.
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 | 04h55m40s | 21°11'N | Taurus | -11.8 | 29'36"5 |
| Jupiter | 04h55m40s | 21°48'N | Taurus | -2.4 | 39"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 90° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.
The sky on 3 May 2024
| The sky on 3 May 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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20% 25 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.