Close approach of the Moon and Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Appulses feed

Tags: Appulse

The Moon and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within 1°25' of each other. The Moon will be 6 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 20:42 (EST), 43° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 00:56.

The Moon will be at mag -11.7; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.0. Both objects will lie in the constellation Leo.

They will be too widely separated to fit 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 11h03m30s 5°51'N Leo -11.7 30'05"3
Jupiter 11h05m20s 7°12'N Leo -2.0 35"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 83° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 11 Jun 2016

The sky on 11 June 2016
Sunrise
05:04
Sunset
20:21
Twilight ends
22:35
Twilight begins
02:51


Waxing Crescent

49%

6 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:01 11:08 18:16
Venus 05:11 12:48 20:25
Moon 12:02 18:32 00:54
Mars 18:08 22:49 03:31
Jupiter 11:57 18:26 00:56
Saturn 19:25 00:08 04:52
All times shown in EDT.

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

09 May 2016  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
06 Feb 2017  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
07 Apr 2017  –  Jupiter at opposition
09 Jun 2017  –  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.

Share