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, Jupiter and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The Moon, Jupiter and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within 6°28' of each other. The Moon will be 6 days old.

From San Diego , the trio will become visible at around 17:17 (PDT), 52° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 22:19.

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 -11.3; Jupiter will be at mag -2.3; and Uranus will be at mag 5.9. The trio will lie in the constellation Pisces.

They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.

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 23h43m10s 3°54'N Pisces -11.3 29'29"6
Jupiter 23h53m40s 2°01'S Pisces -2.3 36"8
Uranus 23h49m40s 1°54'S Pisces 5.9 3"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 68° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 28 Mar 2024

The sky on 28 March 2024
Sunrise
06:39
Sunset
19:05
Twilight ends
20:29
Twilight begins
05:15

18-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

86%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:16 13:52 20:29
Venus 05:59 11:49 17:39
Moon 21:33 02:59 08:18
Mars 05:14 10:48 16:21
Jupiter 08:32 15:17 22:02
Saturn 05:40 11:21 17:02
All times shown in PDT.

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

18 Nov 2010  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
30 Aug 2011  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
28 Oct 2011  –  Jupiter at opposition
25 Dec 2011  –  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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San Diego

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Longitude:
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32.72°N
117.16°W
PDT

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