The Moon and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within 3°04' of each other. The Moon will be 27 days old.
From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 04:56 (EDT) – 2 hours and 16 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 15° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:52.
The Moon will be at mag -9.7; and Jupiter will be at mag -1.8. Both objects will lie in the constellation Ophiuchus.
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 | 16h44m50s | 18°35'S | Ophiuchus | -9.7 | 30'11"5 |
| Jupiter | 16h42m20s | 21°36'S | Ophiuchus | -1.8 | 31"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 30° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.
The sky on 3 Jan 2019
| The sky on 3 January 2019 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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4% 27 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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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
| 10 Jul 2018 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
| 10 Apr 2019 | – Jupiter enters retrograde motion |
| 10 Jun 2019 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 11 Aug 2019 | – 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.