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 a mere 15.3 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Jupiter, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 21 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 23:13, when they reach an altitude of 7° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 04:44, 51° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:17, 50° above your southern horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.4; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.7. Both objects will lie in the constellation Pisces.

They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.

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 00h52m00s 3°43'N Pisces -12.4 32'04"9
Jupiter 00h51m40s 3°57'N Pisces -2.7 43"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 118° from the Sun, which is in Cancer at this time of year.

The sky on 4 Aug 2034

The sky on 4 August 2034
Sunrise
05:36
Sunset
19:59
Twilight ends
21:53
Twilight begins
03:42


Waning Gibbous

68%

20 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:36 12:51 20:07
Venus 09:35 15:40 21:46
Moon 21:59 04:04 10:17
Mars 06:00 13:08 20:16
Jupiter 22:26 04:44 11:01
Saturn 04:21 11:46 19:11
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

02 Aug 2034  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
01 Oct 2034  –  Jupiter at opposition
28 Nov 2034  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
09 Sep 2035  –  Jupiter enters 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.

Share