Close approach of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Appulses feed

Tags: Appulse

The Moon, Venus and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within 4°34' of each other. The Moon will be 3 days old.

From Fairfield , the trio will become visible at around 19:25 (EST), 12° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 32 minutes after the Sun at 20:40.

The Moon will be at mag -10.4; Venus will be at mag -4.1; and Jupiter will be at mag -1.7. The trio will lie in the constellation Virgo.

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

At around the same time, the trio will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.

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

The positions of the trio at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
The Moon 13h34m20s 14°40'S Virgo -10.4 32'58"5
Venus 13h50m30s 12°18'S Virgo -4.1 16"3
Jupiter 13h41m40s 9°25'S Virgo -1.7 31"1

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 39° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.

The sky on 11 Sep 2029

The sky on 11 September 2029
Sunrise
06:26
Sunset
19:08
Twilight ends
20:43
Twilight begins
04:51


Waxing Crescent

15%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:17 13:11 19:05
Venus 10:04 15:22 20:40
Moon 10:30 15:36 20:35
Mars 11:51 16:44 21:36
Jupiter 09:41 15:10 20:40
Saturn 21:57 05:01 12:05
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

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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