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 2°41' of each other. The Moon will be 10 days old.

From Ashburn , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 20:35 (EDT), 48° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 21:45, 51° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 03:07, when they sink below 7° above your western horizon.

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The Moon will be at mag -12.3; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.3. Both objects will lie in the constellation Virgo.

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 12h09m40s 3°29'N Virgo -12.3 29'45"5
Jupiter 12h05m50s 0°58'N Virgo -2.3 40"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 127° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 29 Mar 2024

The sky on 29 March 2024
Sunrise
06:56
Sunset
19:30
Twilight ends
21:01
Twilight begins
05:25

19-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

81%

19 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:25 14:12 20:58
Venus 06:23 12:11 17:59
Moon 23:04 04:01 08:52
Mars 05:41 11:08 16:35
Jupiter 08:39 15:36 22:33
Saturn 06:03 11:39 17:15
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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27 May 1981  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
24 Feb 1982  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
25 Apr 1982  –  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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Ashburn

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39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

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