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 2°00' of each other. The Moon will be 6 days old.

From San Diego , the pair will become visible at around 18:22 (PDT), 34° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 23:07.

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 -11.7; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.2. 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 19h25m30s 24°27'S Sagittarius -11.7 31'20"9
Jupiter 19h24m50s 22°26'S Sagittarius -2.2 37"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 79° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 22 Oct 2020

The sky on 22 October 2020
Sunrise
06:56
Sunset
18:07
Twilight ends
19:29
Twilight begins
05:33

6-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

46%

6 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:32 12:54 18:16
Venus 04:07 10:19 16:32
Moon 13:21 18:25 23:30
Mars 17:35 23:50 06:05
Jupiter 13:04 18:05 23:07
Saturn 13:26 18:31 23:35
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

12 Sep 2020  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
20 Jun 2021  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
19 Aug 2021  –  Jupiter at opposition
17 Oct 2021  –  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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San Diego

Latitude:
Longitude:
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32.72°N
117.16°W
PDT

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