The Moon and Jupiter will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 54' to the south of Jupiter. The Moon will be 8 days old.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:38 (EDT), 67° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 18:08, 68° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 00:41, when they sink below 7° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -11.9, and Jupiter at mag -2.4, both in the constellation Taurus.
The pair 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.
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 | 04h19m50s | 20°01'N | Taurus | -11.9 | 29'33"4 |
| Jupiter | 04h19m50s | 20°55'N | Taurus | -2.4 | 39"6 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 96° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.
The sky on 28 Apr 2024
| The sky on 28 April 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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78% 20 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
| 30 Jan 2013 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
| 06 Nov 2013 | – Jupiter enters retrograde motion |
| 05 Jan 2014 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 06 Mar 2014 | – 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.