The Moon and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within 1°36' of each other. The Moon will be 16 days old.
From Ashburn, the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible at around 19:44, when they rise 7° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach its highest point in the sky at 01:24, 56° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight at around 06:35, 13° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.6, and Jupiter at mag -2.5, both in the constellation Leo.
The pair 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 two objects 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 two objects at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 11h22m40s | +03°51' | Leo | -12.6 | 29'44"8 |
| Jupiter | 11h24m40s | +05°23' | Leo | -2.5 | 43"1 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 164° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.
| The sky on 23 February 2016 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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98% 15 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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Source
The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE405 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
| 06 Feb 2015 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 08 Mar 2016 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 07 Apr 2017 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 08 May 2018 | – Jupiter at opposition |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.