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°47' of each other. The Moon will be 3 days old.

From San Diego , the pair will become visible at around 20:07 (PDT), 27° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 32 minutes after the Sun at 22:23.

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 -10.9 in Leo; and Jupiter will be at mag -1.8 in 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 11h30m00s 1°47'S Leo -10.9 32'47"8
Jupiter 11h40m00s 3°25'N Virgo -1.8 31"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 51° from the Sun, which is in Cancer at this time of year.

The sky on 25 Jul 2028

The sky on 25 July 2028
Sunrise
05:55
Sunset
19:51
Twilight ends
21:26
Twilight begins
04:19

3-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

23%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:55 12:56 19:56
Venus 02:50 09:44 16:37
Moon 10:00 16:10 22:11
Mars 03:36 10:45 17:54
Jupiter 10:00 16:12 22:23
Saturn 00:31 07:07 13:43
All times shown in PDT.

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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San Diego

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

32.72°N
117.16°W
PDT

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