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°51' of each other. The Moon will be 14 days old.

From Ashburn , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 21:59, when they reach an altitude of 7° above your south-eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 01:55, 29° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:28, 11° above your south-western horizon.

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The Moon will be at mag -12.6; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.7. Both objects will lie in the constellation Sagittarius.

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 19h40m40s 23°36'S Sagittarius -12.6 31'15"3
Jupiter 19h40m00s 21°45'S Sagittarius -2.7 46"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 170° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.

The sky on 5 Jul 2020

The sky on 5 July 2020
Sunrise
05:47
Sunset
20:38
Twilight ends
22:36
Twilight begins
03:49

14-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

98%

14 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:36 12:42 19:48
Venus 03:36 10:37 17:38
Moon 20:28 01:14 06:01
Mars 00:36 06:35 12:33
Jupiter 21:07 01:55 06:43
Saturn 21:28 02:21 07:14
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

14 May 2020  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
14 Jul 2020  –  Jupiter at opposition
12 Sep 2020  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
20 Jun 2021  –  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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Ashburn

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39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

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