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 5°21' of each other. The Moon will be 11 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:02 (EST), 34° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 21:11, 70° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 03:45, when they sink below 7° above your western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.6; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.7. Both objects will lie in the constellation Taurus.

They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.

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 04h38m10s 26°56'N Taurus -12.6 32'03"1
Jupiter 04h42m00s 21°39'N Taurus -2.7 45"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 140° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 10 Jan 2025

The sky on 10 January 2025
Sunrise
07:15
Sunset
16:43
Twilight ends
18:21
Twilight begins
05:37


Waxing Gibbous

92%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:10 10:44 15:17
Venus 09:38 15:08 20:38
Moon 13:22 21:19 05:23
Mars 16:58 00:37 08:15
Jupiter 13:47 21:11 04:36
Saturn 10:02 15:38 21:14
All times shown in EST.

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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07 Dec 2024  –  Jupiter at opposition
04 Feb 2025  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
11 Nov 2025  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
10 Jan 2026  –  Jupiter at opposition

Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

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