The Moon and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within 3°40' of each other. The Moon will be 14 days old.
From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 21:10, when they reach an altitude of 7° above your south-eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 01:20, 31° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:20, 9° above your south-western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.6; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.5. Both objects will lie in the constellation Libra.
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 | 15h12m20s | 12°45'S | Libra | -12.6 | 30'26"8 |
| Jupiter | 15h08m10s | 16°16'S | Libra | -2.5 | 43"6 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 169° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.
The sky on 30 Apr 2018
| The sky on 30 April 2018 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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98% 14 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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
| 08 Mar 2018 | – Jupiter enters retrograde motion |
| 08 May 2018 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 10 Jul 2018 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
| 10 Apr 2019 | – Jupiter enters 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.