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°53' of each other. The Moon will be 15 days old.

From Columbus , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 19:34, when they reach an altitude of 7° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 01:38, 63° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 07:37, 8° above your western horizon.

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The Moon will be at mag -12.7; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.9. Both objects will lie in the constellation Aries.

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 02h30m40s 16°23'N Aries -12.7 32'10"3
Jupiter 02h35m30s 13°43'N Aries -2.9 48"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 174° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 29 Oct 2023

The sky on 29 October 2023
Sunrise
07:54
Sunset
18:33
Twilight ends
20:04
Twilight begins
06:23

15-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

98%

15 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:28 13:37 18:46
Venus 04:04 10:22 16:41
Moon 18:26 01:31 08:50
Mars 08:27 13:37 18:48
Jupiter 18:47 01:38 08:28
Saturn 15:52 21:11 02:29
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.

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30 Dec 2023  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
09 Oct 2024  –  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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Columbus

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Longitude:
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39.96°N
83.00°W
EDT

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