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 1°54' of each other. The Moon will be 9 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will become visible at around 20:24 (EDT), 56° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 02:47.

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 -12.1; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.2. Both objects will lie in the constellation Leo.

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 10h57m20s 6°04'N Leo -12.1 29'52"7
Jupiter 10h59m40s 7°53'N Leo -2.2 38"2

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 108° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 15 May 2016

The sky on 15 May 2016
Sunrise
05:32
Sunset
20:04
Twilight ends
21:59
Twilight begins
03:38

9-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

70%

9 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:16 12:13 19:10
Venus 05:21 12:24 19:28
Moon 14:17 20:45 03:05
Mars 20:44 01:26 06:08
Jupiter 13:45 20:16 02:47
Saturn 21:25 02:11 06:58
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

09 May 2016  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
06 Feb 2017  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
07 Apr 2017  –  Jupiter at opposition
09 Jun 2017  –  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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Fairfield

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41.14°N
73.26°W
EDT

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