The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Conjunction of the Moon and Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed

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The sky at

The Moon and Jupiter will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 6°17' to the south of Jupiter. The Moon will be 6 days old.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From Fairfield , the pair will become visible at around 20:49 (EST), 35° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 40 minutes after the Sun at 00:09.

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 at mag -1.9, both in the constellation Leo.

The pair 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.

A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Jupiter around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
The Moon 11h25m20s 1°13'S Leo -11.6 32'23"1
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 75° 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
05:20
Sunset
20:29
Twilight ends
22:37
Twilight begins
03:11

6-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

43%

6 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:04 11:20 18:36
Venus 03:27 10:32 17:37
Moon 12:16 18:13 23:59
Mars 03:46 11:16 18:45
Jupiter 11:27 17:48 00:09
Saturn 02:05 08:51 15:37
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.

Related news

13 May 2028  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
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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Fairfield

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41.14°N
73.26°W
EST

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