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 4°18' of each other. The Moon will be 3 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 16:33 (EDT), 28° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 20:16.

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 -10.9; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.1. Both objects will lie in the constellation Capricornus.

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 21h17m10s 21°09'S Capricornus -10.9 31'40"6
Jupiter 21h11m30s 17°03'S Capricornus -2.1 34"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 51° from the Sun, which is in Ophiuchus at this time of year.

The sky on 17 Jun 2024

The sky on 17 June 2024
Sunrise
05:04
Sunset
20:23
Twilight ends
22:38
Twilight begins
02:49

11-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

80%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:16 12:59 20:43
Venus 05:20 12:59 20:38
Moon 16:10 21:21 02:22
Mars 02:25 09:15 16:05
Jupiter 03:48 11:11 18:34
Saturn 00:41 06:22 12:02
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

03 Oct 1985  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
12 Jul 1986  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
10 Sep 1986  –  Jupiter at opposition
08 Nov 1986  –  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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Cambridge

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42.38°N
71.11°W
EDT

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