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°42' of each other. The Moon will be 5 days old.

From Jacksonville , the pair will become visible at around 20:43 (EST), 47° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 00:29.

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 -11.3; and Jupiter will be at mag -1.9. 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 09h32m40s 13°45'N Leo -11.3 32'32"9
Jupiter 09h35m30s 15°19'N Leo -1.9 33"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 63° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 9 Jun 2027

The sky on 9 June 2027
Sunrise
06:21
Sunset
20:27
Twilight ends
22:03
Twilight begins
04:44

5-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

32%

5 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:40 14:40 21:40
Venus 05:21 12:11 19:02
Moon 11:36 18:15 00:45
Mars 12:42 19:05 01:27
Jupiter 11:10 17:50 00:29
Saturn 03:30 09:49 16:09
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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12 Jan 2028  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
12 Mar 2028  –  Jupiter at opposition
13 May 2028  –  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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Jacksonville

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Longitude:
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30.33°N
81.66°W
EST

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