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°39' of each other. The Moon will be 6 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 20:45 (EST), 34° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 37 minutes after the Sun at 00:01.

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 -11.6; 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 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 11h15m20s 0°00'S Leo -11.6 32'24"9
Jupiter 11h25m20s 5°04'N Leo -1.9 34"1

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 73° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.

The sky on 28 Jun 2028

The sky on 28 June 2028
Sunrise
05:07
Sunset
20:24
Twilight ends
22:39
Twilight begins
02:52

6-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

41%

6 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 03:52 11:12 18:31
Venus 03:16 10:24 17:32
Moon 12:07 18:04 23:50
Mars 03:34 11:07 18:40
Jupiter 11:18 17:39 00:01
Saturn 01:54 08:42 15:31
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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10 Feb 2029  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
11 Apr 2029  –  Jupiter at opposition
13 Jun 2029  –  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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Cambridge

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Longitude:
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42.38°N
71.11°W
EST

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