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
From the Appulses feed

Tags: Appulse
Please wait
Loading 0/4
Click and drag to rotate
Mouse wheel to zoom in/out
Touch with mouse to dismiss
The sky at

The Moon and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within 3°47' of each other. The Moon will be 13 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:24 (EST), 25° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 22:25, 71° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 05:03, when they sink below 7° above your north-western horizon.

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 -12.7; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.6. Both objects will lie in the constellation Gemini.

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 07h17m20s 26°21'N Gemini -12.7 32'33"6
Jupiter 07h14m10s 22°38'N Gemini -2.6 44"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 156° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 30 Jan 2026

The sky on 30 January 2026
Sunrise
07:03
Sunset
17:06
Twilight ends
18:41
Twilight begins
05:28

12-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

97%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:34 12:32 17:31
Venus 07:29 12:29 17:29
Moon 14:27 22:27 06:19
Mars 06:55 11:45 16:34
Jupiter 14:57 22:26 05:55
Saturn 09:15 15:09 21:02
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

10 Jan 2026  –  Jupiter at opposition
10 Mar 2026  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
12 Dec 2026  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
10 Feb 2027  –  Jupiter at opposition

Image credit

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

Share

Fairfield

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

41.14°N
73.26°W
EST

Color scheme