Jupiter orbit around the Sun will carry it to its furthest point from the Earth – its apogee – moving to a distance of 6.21 AU from us. Since the size and brightness of Jupiter in the night sky both decrease when it is far away from us, this marks the moment when it will appear smallest, measuring a mere 31.0 arcsec in diameter. However, in practice, it will be rather too close to the Sun for observation, at an angular separation of only 1.4596421099569° from it, as it will be close to solar conjunction.
A chart of the path of Jupiter across the sky in 2019 can be found here, and a chart of its rising and setting times here.
The position of Jupiter at the moment it passes apogee will be:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| Jupiter | 18h21m40s | 23°14'S | Sagittarius | -1.8 | 31.0" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The sky on 25 Dec 2019
| The sky on 25 December 2019 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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0% 29 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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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
| 11 Aug 2019 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
| 14 May 2020 | – Jupiter enters retrograde motion |
| 14 Jul 2020 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 12 Sep 2020 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
Image credit
© NASA/Cassini