Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Jupiter and Saturn will share the same right ascension, with Jupiter passing 1°08' to the north of Saturn.

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 19:53 (EDT), 29° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 13 minutes after the Sun at 22:38.

Jupiter will be at mag -2.1, and Saturn at mag 0.0, both in the constellation Taurus.

The pair 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.

A graph of the angular separation between Jupiter and Saturn 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 03h53m40s 19°38'N Taurus -2.1 33"4
Saturn 03h53m40s 18°29'N Taurus 0.0 16"8

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

The sky on 17 Jul 2024

The sky on 17 July 2024
Sunrise
05:32
Sunset
20:22
Twilight ends
22:22
Twilight begins
03:31


Waxing Gibbous

88%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:50 14:44 21:39
Venus 06:31 13:47 21:04
Moon 17:22 21:50 02:13
Mars 01:38 08:51 16:03
Jupiter 02:25 09:49 17:12
Saturn 22:51 04:32 10:13
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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