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 1°05' of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Jupiter, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 14 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:48 (EST), 14° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 23:26, 64° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 05:38, when they sink below 7° above your western horizon.

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The Moon will be at mag -12.8; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.5. Both objects will lie in the constellation Leo.

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 09h30m50s 14°41'N Leo -12.8 33'01"3
Jupiter 09h32m40s 15°40'N Leo -2.5 44"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 169° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 19 Feb 2027

The sky on 19 February 2027
Sunrise
06:40
Sunset
17:30
Twilight ends
19:03
Twilight begins
05:08

13-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

99%

13 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:19 11:51 17:24
Venus 04:28 09:14 14:00
Moon 16:11 23:22 06:19
Mars 17:14 00:13 07:12
Jupiter 16:26 23:26 06:26
Saturn 08:29 14:41 20:53
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 Feb 2027  –  Jupiter at opposition
12 Apr 2027  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
12 Jan 2028  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
12 Mar 2028  –  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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Fairfield

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41.14°N
73.26°W
EST

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