The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Lunar occultation of Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Lunar Occultations feed

Objects: Jupiter

The Moon will pass in front of Jupiter, creating a lunar occultation visible from countries and territories including Antarctica, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay amongst others. Although the occultation will only be visible across part of the world – because the Moon is so close to the Earth that its position in the sky varies by as much as two degrees across the world – a close conjunction between the pair will be more widely visible.

Unfortunately the occultation will not be visible from San Diego.

The map below shows the visibility of the occultation across the world. Separate contours show where the disappearance of Jupiter is visible (shown in red), and where its reappearance is visible (shown in blue). Solid contours show where each event is likely to be visible through binoculars at a reasonable altitude in the sky. Dotted contours indicate where each event occurs above the horizon, but may not be visible due to the sky being too bright or the Moon being very close to the horizon.

Map showing where the occultation is visible

Outside the contours, the Moon will not pass in front of Jupiter at any time, or is below the horizon at the time of the occultation. However, a close conjunction between the pair will be visible across much of the world.

The map can be downloaded in PNG , PDF or SVG format. A KMZ file , is also available, which can be opened in Google Earth to provide a higher resolution map.

The animation below shows the path of the occultation across the Earth's globe. The red circle shows where the Moon appears in front of Jupiter.

You can download this video in MP4 or OGG format.

A complete list of the countries and territories where the occultation will be visible is as follows:

Country Time span
(UTC)
Antarctica 21:49–23:26
Argentina 22:35–00:09
Chile 22:33–00:04
Uruguay 23:22–00:08
Falkland Islands 22:43–23:43
Brazil 23:34–00:08

Lunar occultations are only ever visible from a small fraction of the Earth's surface. Since the Moon is much closer to the Earth than other celestial objects, its exact position in the sky differs depending on your exact location on Earth due to its large parallax. The position of the Moon as seen from two points on opposite sides of the Earth varies by up to two degrees, or four times the diameter of the full moon.

This means that if the Moon is aligned to pass in front of a particular object for an observer on one side of the Earth, it will appear up to two degrees away from that object on the other side of the Earth.

The position of Jupiter at the moment of the occultation will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Jupiter 00h39m10s 3°00'N Pisces -2.1 0'33"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occultations

« Previous Next »
Visible from the Contiguous United States Worldwide Worldwide Visible from the Contiguous United States
07 Dec 2004 19 Feb 2020 Occultations of Jupiter 17 May 2023 17 May 2023
31 Jan 2023 17 Feb 2023 Occultations 28 Feb 2023 17 May 2023

The sky on 22 Feb 2023

The sky on 22 February 2023
Sunrise
06:22
Sunset
17:39
Twilight ends
19:01
Twilight begins
05:00

2-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

13%

2 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:41 10:56 16:12
Venus 07:46 13:50 19:53
Moon 08:05 14:18 20:39
Mars 11:24 18:37 01:51
Jupiter 08:07 14:17 20:28
Saturn 06:14 11:41 17:09
All times shown in PST.

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

23 Nov 2022  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
04 Sep 2023  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
02 Nov 2023  –  Jupiter at opposition
30 Dec 2023  –  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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