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°46' of each other. The Moon will be 8 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 18:23 (EST), 25° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 18:55, 25° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 22:35, when they sink below 7° above your south-western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.0; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.4. Both objects will lie in the constellation Sagittarius.

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 19h34m30s 16°20'S Sagittarius -12.0 31'58"6
Jupiter 19h38m50s 22°02'S Sagittarius -2.4 38"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 93° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 12 Oct 2032

The sky on 12 October 2032
Sunrise
06:51
Sunset
18:06
Twilight ends
19:39
Twilight begins
05:17


Waxing Gibbous

58%

8 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:56 13:52 18:49
Venus 09:54 14:41 19:29
Moon 14:14 19:21 00:33
Mars 04:14 10:37 17:01
Jupiter 14:18 18:55 23:32
Saturn 22:15 05:47 13:18
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.

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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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