Conjunction of the Moon and Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


The Moon and Jupiter will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 19' to the north of Jupiter. The Moon will be 11 days old.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:17 (EDT), 40° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 20:59, 71° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 03:43, when they sink below 7° above your north-western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.4, and Jupiter at mag -2.6, both in the constellation Gemini.

The pair 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.

A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Jupiter 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
The Moon 06h22m40s 23°43'N Gemini -12.4 29'32"2
Jupiter 06h22m40s 23°23'N Gemini -2.6 43"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 138° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 3 Jul 2024

The sky on 3 July 2024
Sunrise
05:09
Sunset
20:24
Twilight ends
22:37
Twilight begins
02:56


Waning Crescent

3%

27 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:44 14:12 21:39
Venus 05:47 13:21 20:56
Moon 02:34 10:37 18:50
Mars 01:52 08:57 16:02
Jupiter 02:57 10:23 17:48
Saturn 23:39 05:19 11:00
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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31 Dec 2084  –  Jupiter at opposition
28 Feb 2085  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
03 Dec 2085  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
01 Feb 2086  –  Jupiter at opposition

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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