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 5°24' of each other. The Moon will be 22 days old.

From Ashburn , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 00:35, when they reach an altitude of 7° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 06:02, 53° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 07:03, 51° above your south-western horizon.

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The Moon will be at mag -12.0; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.1. Both objects will lie in the constellation Virgo.

They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.

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 11h38m30s 2°15'S Virgo -12.0 32'02"3
Jupiter 11h48m10s 2°35'N Virgo -2.1 36"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 91° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 20 Dec 2027

The sky on 20 December 2027
Sunrise
07:22
Sunset
16:49
Twilight ends
18:25
Twilight begins
05:45

22-day old moon
Waning Crescent

45%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:53 12:27 17:00
Venus 09:39 14:26 19:14
Moon 23:57 06:03 11:58
Mars 08:53 13:35 18:17
Jupiter 23:51 06:03 12:14
Saturn 13:11 19:32 01:54
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.

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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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Ashburn

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39.04°N
77.49°W
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