The Moon and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within a mere 28.4 arcminutes of each other. The Moon will be 1 days old.
From Fairfield , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 9° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 19:23 (EST), 9° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 12 minutes after the Sun at 20:18.
The Moon will be at mag -8.3; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.0. Both objects will lie in the constellation Pisces.
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 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 | 01h03m40s | 5°06'N | Pisces | -8.3 | 32'15"2 |
| Jupiter | 01h02m50s | 5°31'N | Pisces | -2.0 | 32"6 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 15° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.
The sky on 22 Mar 2023
| The sky on 22 March 2023 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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3% 1 day old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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.
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| 30 Dec 2023 | – 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.