Conjunction of Jupiter and Neptune

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Jupiter and Neptune will share the same right ascension, with Jupiter passing 35' to the north of Neptune.

From Cambridge however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 16° from it.

Jupiter will be at mag -2.0, and Neptune at mag 7.9, both in the constellation Pisces.

The pair will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Jupiter and Neptune 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
Jupiter 01h19m40s 7°15'N Pisces -2.0 32"6
Neptune 01h19m40s 6°40'N Pisces 7.9 2"2

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 16° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 25 Mar 2035

The sky on 25 March 2035
Sunrise
06:37
Sunset
19:00
Twilight ends
20:36
Twilight begins
05:01


Waning Gibbous

94%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:25 12:12 17:59
Venus 05:22 10:39 15:56
Moon 19:57 01:49 07:34
Mars 03:17 07:50 12:23
Jupiter 07:22 13:51 20:21
Saturn 13:06 20:31 03:57
All times shown in EDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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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