The planets Jupiter and Mercury will make a close approach, passing within a mere 19.5 arcminutes of each other.
From Cambridge however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 5° above the horizon at dawn.
Jupiter will be at mag -2.0; and Mercury will be at mag 0.1. Both objects will lie in the constellation Capricornus.
They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also 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 Jupiter and Mercury 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 |
| Jupiter | 21h19m30s | 16°12'S | Capricornus | -2.0 | 32"4 |
| Mercury | 21h19m30s | 15°53'S | Capricornus | 0.1 | 7"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 27° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.
The sky on 5 Mar 2021
| The sky on 5 March 2021 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
53% 22 days old |
All times shown in EST.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 |
| 18 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.