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°37' of each other. The Moon will be 18 days old.

From San Diego , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 00:03, when they reach an altitude of 7° above your south-eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 04:17, 34° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:52, 30° above your south-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 -12.4; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.4. Both objects will lie in the constellation Ophiuchus.

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 17h34m00s 21°02'S Ophiuchus -12.4 30'44"9
Jupiter 17h33m10s 22°39'S Ophiuchus -2.4 41"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 128° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 23 Apr 2019

The sky on 23 April 2019
Sunrise
06:08
Sunset
19:24
Twilight ends
20:52
Twilight begins
04:39

18-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

77%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:13 11:17 17:22
Venus 04:55 10:58 17:00
Moon 23:00 04:15 09:29
Mars 08:28 15:37 22:45
Jupiter 23:16 04:16 09:17
Saturn 01:06 06:10 11:15
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

10 Apr 2019  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
10 Jun 2019  –  Jupiter at opposition
11 Aug 2019  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
14 May 2020  –  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.

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San Diego

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32.72°N
117.16°W
PDT

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