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
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The Moon will pass in front of Jupiter, creating a lunar occultation visible from Africa and the Americas. 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.

The occultation will be visible from Cambridge. It will begin with the disappearance of Jupiter behind the Moon at 04:27 EDT in the eastern sky at an altitude of 23.6 degrees. Its reappearance will be visible at 05:31 EDT at an altitude of 35.3 degrees.

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)
The Contiguous United States 14:03–08:24
Canada 13:39–07:26
Democratic Republic of the Congo 00:20–03:47
Mali 03:48–02:45
Angola 00:44–03:51
Mauritania 03:34–02:31
Nigeria 00:20–03:03
Namibia 23:13–03:52
Zambia 00:38–03:51
Algeria 02:52–02:54
Niger 03:29–03:10
Central African Republic 00:17–03:54
Cameroon 00:18–03:08
Botswana 23:28–03:54
Tanzania 00:26–03:43
Republic of the Congo 00:23–03:30
Ivory Coast 04:00–03:01
Western Sahara 03:40–02:11
Burkina Faso 04:14–02:48
Gabon 00:28–03:27
Chad 00:17–03:35
Guinea 03:38–02:52
Ghana 04:20–03:02
Morocco 02:47–02:25
Uganda 00:21–04:16
Senegal 03:30–02:37
Benin 03:39–02:57
Zimbabwe 01:05–03:54
Mexico 05:54–08:59
Cuba 22:12–00:41
Liberia 03:50–03:00
Sudan 00:17–04:12
Sierra Leone 03:44–02:51
Togo 03:38–02:58
Guinea-Bissau 03:34–02:38
Burundi 00:28–03:17
Equatorial Guinea 00:31–03:13
Bahamas 02:46–00:47
Rwanda 00:26–04:10
Kenya 00:22–04:24
South Africa 23:32–03:54
The Canary Islands 02:40–05:05
Gambia 03:33–02:34
Cape Verde 03:12–02:19
The Portuguese Azores 02:16–05:03
Sao Tome and Principe 04:12–03:17
Turks and Caicos Islands 02:38–00:45
Saint Pierre and Miquelon 02:04–00:45
Bermuda 02:51–00:59
Madeira 02:36–05:09
The Savage Islands 02:40–05:09
Mozambique 00:41–03:54

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.

At the time of the occultation, the Moon will be 6 days past new moon and will be 20% illuminated. Jupiter will disappear behind the illuminated side of the Moon and reappear from behind the unilluminated side of the Moon.

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Jupiter 09h31m00s 15°20'N Leo -1.9 0'32"

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
08 Sep 2026 08 Sep 2026 Occultations of Jupiter 02 Nov 2026 14 May 2034
08 Sep 2026 05 Oct 2026 Occultations 14 Oct 2026 20 Jun 2027

The sky on 6 Oct 2026

The sky on 6 October 2026
Sunrise
06:44
Sunset
18:17
Twilight ends
19:50
Twilight begins
05:10

25-day old moon
Waning Crescent

15%

25 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:58 13:59 19:01
Venus 09:13 13:54 18:35
Moon 02:02 09:21 16:24
Mars 00:50 08:12 15:34
Jupiter 02:13 09:14 16:16
Saturn 18:19 00:28 06:38
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.

Related news

10 Jan 2026  –  Jupiter at opposition
10 Feb 2027  –  Jupiter at opposition
12 Mar 2028  –  Jupiter at opposition
11 Apr 2029  –  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.

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