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°40' of each other. The Moon will be 20 days old.

From San Diego , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 22:30, when they reach an altitude of 7° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 03:58, 59° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 06:32, 42° above your south-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 -12.5; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.3. 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 11h41m10s 2°41'S Virgo -12.5 32'30"4
Jupiter 11h51m20s 2°23'N Virgo -2.3 39"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 118° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 16 Jan 2028

The sky on 16 January 2028
Sunrise
06:48
Sunset
17:04
Twilight ends
18:31
Twilight begins
05:21

20-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

68%

20 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:56 13:14 18:31
Venus 08:57 14:30 20:03
Moon 21:30 03:42 09:45
Mars 07:43 12:56 18:08
Jupiter 21:49 03:58 10:07
Saturn 11:08 17:26 23:44
All times shown in PST.

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

12 Jan 2028  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
12 Mar 2028  –  Jupiter at opposition
13 May 2028  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
10 Feb 2029  –  Jupiter enters 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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