Lunar occultation of Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Lunar Occultations feed


Objects: Jupiter

The Moon will pass in front of Jupiter, creating a lunar occultation visible from countries and territories including Indonesia, northern Australia, Papua New Guinea and Philippines amongst others. Although the occultation will only be visible across part of the world – because the Moon is so close to the Earth that its position in the sky varies by as much as two degrees across the world – a close conjunction between the pair will be more widely visible.

Unfortunately the occultation will not be visible from Cambridge.

The map below shows the visibility of the occultation across the world. Separate contours show where the disappearance of Jupiter is visible (shown in red), and where its reappearance is visible (shown in blue). Solid contours show where each event is likely to be visible through binoculars at a reasonable altitude in the sky. Dotted contours indicate where each event occurs above the horizon, but may not be visible due to the sky being too bright or the Moon being very close to the horizon.

Outside the contours, the Moon will not pass in front of Jupiter at any time, or is below the horizon at the time of the occultation. However, a close conjunction between the pair will be visible across much of the world.

The map can be downloaded in PNG , PDF or SVG format. A KMZ file , is also available, which can be opened in Google Earth to provide a higher resolution map.

The animation below shows the path of the occultation across the Earth's globe. The red circle shows where the Moon appears in front of Jupiter.

[Unable to display this video because your browser does not support HTML5]
You can download this video in MP4 or OGG format.

A complete list of the countries and territories where the occultation will be visible is as follows:

Country Time span
(UTC)
Indonesia 17:11–18:40
Australia 17:22–18:35
Papua New Guinea 17:21–19:11
Philippines 17:13–18:21
Malaysia 17:12–18:16
Solomon Islands 17:44–19:28
Hawaii 20:00–21:23
East Timor 17:17–18:12
Kiribati 18:31–20:46
Brunei 17:23–18:13
Federated States of Micronesia 17:48–19:42
Vanuatu 18:23–19:11
Marshall Islands 18:26–20:15
Guam 17:54–18:42
Northern Mariana Islands 17:59–18:40
Midway Atoll 19:49–21:13
Palau 17:24–18:31
Tuvalu 18:57–19:54
Kingman Reef 19:54–20:58
Palmyra Atoll 19:55–20:57
Nauru 18:11–19:51
Baker Island 19:07–20:29
Howland Island 19:07–20:31
Johnston Atoll 19:38–21:05
Midway Islands 20:00–20:23
Spratly Islands 17:31–18:14
Wake Island 19:04–19:45

Lunar occultations are only ever visible from a small fraction of the Earth's surface. Since the Moon is much closer to the Earth than other celestial objects, its exact position in the sky differs depending on your exact location on Earth due to its large parallax. The position of the Moon as seen from two points on opposite sides of the Earth varies by up to two degrees, or four times the diameter of the full moon.

This means that if the Moon is aligned to pass in front of a particular object for an observer on one side of the Earth, it will appear up to two degrees away from that object on the other side of the Earth.

The position of Jupiter at the moment of the occultation will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Jupiter 21h40m20s 14°37'S Capricornus -2.3 0'36"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occultations

« Previous Next »
Visible from the Contiguous United States Worldwide Worldwide Visible from the Contiguous United States
02 Feb 2089 02 Apr 2092 Occultations of Jupiter 27 May 2092 13 Sep 2092
21 Mar 2092 17 Apr 2092 Occultations 08 May 2092 15 May 2092

The sky on 23 Nov 2024

The sky on 23 November 2024
Sunrise
06:43
Sunset
16:15
Twilight ends
17:54
Twilight begins
05:03


Waning Crescent

41%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:33 12:55 17:17
Venus 10:09 14:32 18:54
Moon 23:09 06:06 12:50
Mars 20:36 04:03 11:30
Jupiter 17:09 00:40 08:11
Saturn 12:58 18:29 23:59
All times shown in EST.

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.

Related news

08 Sep 2091  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
14 Jun 2092  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
13 Aug 2092  –  Jupiter at opposition
12 Oct 2092  –  Jupiter ends 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.

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