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°25' of each other. The Moon will be 21 days old.

From Kuala Lumpur , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 00:24, when they reach an altitude of 7° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 05:55, 71° above your northern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 06:49, 67° above your north-western horizon.

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 -12.2; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.5. Both objects will lie in the constellation Taurus.

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 04h40m30s 18°49'N Taurus -12.2 31'54"5
Jupiter 04h38m30s 21°11'N Taurus -2.5 41"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 105° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 18 May 2024

The sky on 18 May 2024
Sunrise
06:59
Sunset
19:17
Twilight ends
20:31
Twilight begins
05:45

10-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

81%

10 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:30 11:34 17:39
Venus 06:43 12:49 18:55
Moon 15:21 21:32 03:42
Mars 04:15 10:18 16:21
Jupiter 07:03 13:10 19:17
Saturn 02:44 08:45 14:46
All times shown in GMT+08.

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

20 Dec 1999  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
29 Sep 2000  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
28 Nov 2000  –  Jupiter at opposition
25 Jan 2001  –  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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Kuala Lumpur

Latitude:
Longitude:
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3.14°N
101.69°E
GMT+08

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