The planets Venus and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within a mere 15.7 arcminutes of each other.
From Fairfield , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 8° above the horizon. They will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 05:24 (EST) – 1 hour and 12 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 8° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:18.
Venus will be at mag -3.9; and Jupiter will be at mag -1.7. Both objects will lie in the constellation Virgo.
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 | 14h20m40s | 12°40'S | Virgo | -3.9 | 10"1 |
| Jupiter | 14h20m20s | 12°55'S | Virgo | -1.7 | 30"1 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 13° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.
The sky on 13 Nov 2017
| The sky on 13 November 2017 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
20% 25 days old |
All times shown in EST.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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
| 09 Jun 2017 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
| 08 Mar 2018 | – Jupiter enters retrograde motion |
| 08 May 2018 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 10 Jul 2018 | – 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.