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 6°27' of each other. The Moon will be 14 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 19:57 (EST), 20° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 23:35, 41° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 04:27, when they sink below 7° above your western horizon.

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The Moon will be at mag -12.8; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.4. 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 13h07m40s 12°30'S Virgo -12.8 33'21"7
Jupiter 13h17m00s 6°28'S Virgo -2.4 43"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 162° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 27 Apr 2029

The sky on 27 April 2029
Sunrise
05:42
Sunset
19:38
Twilight ends
21:26
Twilight begins
03:55

14-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

99%

14 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:20 13:49 21:18
Venus 06:10 13:15 20:21
Moon 17:53 --:-- 04:39
Mars 15:46 22:03 04:21
Jupiter 17:56 23:35 05:15
Saturn 06:11 13:06 20:01
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

11 Apr 2029  –  Jupiter at opposition
13 Jun 2029  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
13 Mar 2030  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
13 May 2030  –  Jupiter at opposition

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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42.38°N
71.11°W
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