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

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 Australia, western Indonesia, southern India and New Zealand 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 Fairfield.

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.

Map showing where the occultation is visible

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.

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)
Australia 05:51–08:27
Indonesia 05:00–07:12
India 04:35–05:30
New Zealand 07:36–08:34
Tasmania 07:13–08:05
Sri Lanka 04:37–05:32
Malaysia 05:19–05:56
Fiji 07:45–08:37
New Caledonia 07:34–08:35
Vanuatu 07:41–08:34
East Timor 06:27–07:05
Maldives 04:31–05:36
Seychelles 04:37–05:25
Singapore 05:24–05:56
British Indian Ocean Territory 04:37–05:39
Lord Howe Island 07:23–08:28
Christmas Island 05:19–06:40
Cocos Islands 05:05–06:25
Norfolk Island 07:32–08:34

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 14h01m30s 11°18'S Virgo -1.7 0'31"

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
19 Aug 1958 Occultations of Jupiter 08 Jan 1962 27 Jun 1965
21 Mar 1958 04 Sep 1958 Occultations 07 Dec 1958 11 Mar 1959

The sky on 26 Jun 2024

The sky on 26 June 2024
Sunrise
05:19
Sunset
20:29
Twilight ends
22:37
Twilight begins
03:10

20-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

74%

20 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:19 13:54 21:29
Venus 05:46 13:20 20:54
Moon 23:35 04:50 10:16
Mars 02:17 09:13 16:09
Jupiter 03:32 10:53 18:13
Saturn 00:14 05:55 11:37
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.

Related news

18 Jun 1958  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
18 Mar 1959  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
18 May 1959  –  Jupiter at opposition
20 Jul 1959  –  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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