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°17' of each other. The Moon will be 3 days old.

From Ashburn , the pair will become visible at around 18:27 (EDT), 18° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 32 minutes after the Sun at 20:42.

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 -10.6; and Jupiter will be at mag -1.9. 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 17h30m20s 21°46'S Ophiuchus -10.6 31'24"8
Jupiter 17h29m30s 23°03'S Ophiuchus -1.9 32"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 45° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 31 Oct 2019

The sky on 31 October 2019
Sunrise
07:33
Sunset
18:10
Twilight ends
19:41
Twilight begins
06:03

3-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

18%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 09:22 14:08 18:54
Venus 09:20 14:14 19:09
Moon 11:18 16:13 21:06
Mars 05:54 11:37 17:20
Jupiter 11:17 16:00 20:42
Saturn 12:50 17:35 22:21
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

11 Aug 2019  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
14 May 2020  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
14 Jul 2020  –  Jupiter at opposition
12 Sep 2020  –  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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Ashburn

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Longitude:
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39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

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