The planets Venus and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within a mere 11.9 arcminutes of each other.
From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 04:30 (EDT) – 1 hour and 33 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 12° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:45.
Venus will be at mag -3.9; and Jupiter will be at mag -1.8. Both objects will lie in the constellation Cancer.
They 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.
At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between Venus 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 |
| Venus | 08h38m20s | 19°07'N | Cancer | -3.9 | 10"3 |
| Jupiter | 08h38m10s | 18°56'N | Cancer | -1.8 | 30"9 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 17° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.
The sky on 28 Apr 2024
| The sky on 28 April 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
74% 20 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Warning
Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.
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
| 06 Mar 2014 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
| 08 Dec 2014 | – Jupiter enters retrograde motion |
| 06 Feb 2015 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 08 Apr 2015 | – 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.