The Moon, Jupiter and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 3°16' of each other. The Moon will be 5 days old.
From Fairfield , the trio will become visible at around 17:12 (EDT), 23° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 41 minutes after the Sun at 20:35.
The Moon will be at mag -11.3; Jupiter will be at mag -2.1; and Mars will be at mag 0.4. The trio will lie in the constellation Sagittarius.
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 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 | 18h37m20s | 26°35'S | Sagittarius | -11.3 | 31'16"2 |
| Jupiter | 18h37m20s | 23°19'S | Sagittarius | -2.1 | 34"6 |
| Mars | 18h36m50s | 25°11'S | Sagittarius | 0.4 | 7"4 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 62° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.
The sky on 24 Apr 2024
| The sky on 24 April 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
99% 16 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
| 29 Aug 1984 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
| 04 Jun 1985 | – Jupiter enters retrograde motion |
| 04 Aug 1985 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 03 Oct 1985 | – 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.