The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Close approach of the Moon and Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within 1°00' 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 14 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will be visible between 20:21 and 05:28. They will become accessible at around 20:21, when they rise to an altitude of 7° above your eastern horizon. They will reach their highest point in the sky at 00:55, 37° above your southern horizon. They will become inaccessible at around 05:28 when they sink below 7° above your south-western horizon.

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The Moon will be at mag -12.6; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.9. Both objects will lie in the constellation Aquarius.

They 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.

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 22h23m30s 12°30'S Aquarius -12.6 31'05"4
Jupiter 22h21m40s 11°36'S Aquarius -2.9 48"2

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 177° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.

The sky on 23 Nov 2024

The sky on 23 November 2024
Sunrise
06:48
Sunset
16:27
Twilight ends
18:04
Twilight begins
05:11

22-day old moon
Waning Crescent

43%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:37 13:04 17:30
Venus 10:14 14:41 19:08
Moon 23:20 06:15 12:58
Mars 20:49 04:12 11:35
Jupiter 17:22 00:49 08:16
Saturn 13:05 18:37 00:09
All times shown in EST.

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

26 Aug 1950  –  Jupiter at opposition
24 Oct 1950  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
04 Aug 1951  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
02 Oct 1951  –  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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41.14°N
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