The Moon, Jupiter and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 48.9 arcminutes 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 4 days old.
From Columbus , the trio will become visible at around 19:18 (EDT), 17° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 20 minutes after the Sun at 21:22.
The Moon will be at mag -10.8; Jupiter will be at mag -2.0; and Uranus will be at mag 5.7. The trio will lie in the constellation Scorpius.
They will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably 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 trio 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 trio at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 16h20m10s | 20°27'S | Scorpius | -10.8 | 31'03"7 |
| Jupiter | 16h17m00s | 20°49'S | Scorpius | -2.0 | 33"9 |
| Uranus | 16h19m10s | 21°21'S | Scorpius | 5.7 | 3"5 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 50° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.
The sky on 19 Apr 2024
| The sky on 19 April 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
87% 11 days old |
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
| 14 Aug 1983 | – Uranus ends retrograde motion |
| 18 Mar 1984 | – Uranus enters retrograde motion |
| 01 Jun 1984 | – Uranus at opposition |
| 18 Aug 1984 | – Uranus 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.