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

Conjunction of the Moon and Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed

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The sky at

The Moon and Jupiter will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 16' to the south of Jupiter. The Moon will be 3 days old.

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

From Jacksonville , the pair will become visible at around 17:44 (EDT), 16° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 49 minutes after the Sun at 19:17.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

The Moon will be at mag -9.4, and Jupiter at mag -1.9, both in the constellation Sagittarius.

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 18h55m30s 23°14'S Sagittarius -9.4 29'41"3
Jupiter 18h55m30s 22°57'S Sagittarius -1.9 31"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 26° from the Sun, which is in Ophiuchus at this time of year.

The sky on 16 Aug 2024

The sky on 16 August 2024
Sunrise
06:51
Sunset
20:06
Twilight ends
21:32
Twilight begins
05:25

12-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

88%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:18 13:39 20:00
Venus 08:25 14:46 21:07
Moon 18:05 23:06 04:10
Mars 01:52 08:51 15:50
Jupiter 01:49 08:47 15:45
Saturn 21:16 03:02 08:48
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

25 Aug 1972  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
30 May 1973  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
30 Jul 1973  –  Jupiter at opposition
28 Sep 1973  –  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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Jacksonville

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30.33°N
81.66°W
EDT

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