Conjunction of the Moon and Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


The Moon and Jupiter will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 5°59' to the south of Jupiter. The Moon will be 12 days old.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 19:34 (EDT), 31° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 22:59, 53° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 04:36, when they sink below 7° above your western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.7, and Jupiter at mag -2.4, both in the constellation Leo.

The pair 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.

A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Jupiter around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
The Moon 11h22m10s 0°17'S Leo -12.7 33'02"9
Jupiter 11h22m10s 5°42'N Leo -2.4 42"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 153° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 7 Apr 2028

The sky on 7 April 2028
Sunrise
06:13
Sunset
19:16
Twilight ends
20:55
Twilight begins
04:34


Waxing Gibbous

97%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:12 12:29 18:47
Venus 07:54 15:37 23:21
Moon 17:27 23:31 05:22
Mars 06:10 12:31 18:53
Jupiter 16:34 22:58 05:23
Saturn 06:52 13:29 20:05
All times shown in EDT.

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

12 Mar 2028  –  Jupiter at opposition
13 May 2028  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
10 Feb 2029  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
11 Apr 2029  –  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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