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 6°21' to the south of Jupiter. The Moon will be 4 days old.

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

From Fairfield , the pair will become visible at around 20:10 (EST), 21° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 27 minutes after the Sun at 22:19.

The Moon will be at mag -11.3, and Jupiter at mag -1.9, both in the constellation Virgo.

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 13h23m50s 13°57'S Virgo -11.3 32'31"3
Jupiter 13h23m50s 7°36'S Virgo -1.9 32"8

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 62° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.

The sky on 14 Aug 2029

The sky on 14 August 2029
Sunrise
05:58
Sunset
19:52
Twilight ends
21:37
Twilight begins
04:13


Waxing Crescent

32%

4 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:20 14:35 20:50
Venus 09:06 15:14 21:21
Moon 11:31 16:49 21:58
Mars 12:09 17:23 22:38
Jupiter 11:06 16:42 22:19
Saturn 23:46 06:49 13:53
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

13 Jun 2029  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
13 Mar 2030  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
13 May 2030  –  Jupiter at opposition
14 Jul 2030  –  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.

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