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 1°43' of each other. The Moon will be 11 days old.

From Jacksonville , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 20:37 (EST), 32° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 22:05, 37° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 02:26, when they sink below 7° 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 -2.5. Both objects will lie in the constellation Ophiuchus.

They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.

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 17h12m40s 20°55'S Ophiuchus -12.5 32'49"2
Jupiter 17h12m40s 22°38'S Ophiuchus -2.5 42"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 132° from the Sun, which is in Cancer at this time of year.

The sky on 30 Jul 2031

The sky on 30 July 2031
Sunrise
06:40
Sunset
20:21
Twilight ends
21:52
Twilight begins
05:09

11-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

87%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:16 14:41 21:05
Venus 08:09 14:31 20:54
Moon 17:15 22:32 03:49
Mars 14:27 19:45 01:02
Jupiter 16:58 22:05 03:11
Saturn 03:10 10:06 17:02
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

15 Jun 2031  –  Jupiter at opposition
16 Aug 2031  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
19 May 2032  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
19 Jul 2032  –  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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Jacksonville

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30.33°N
81.66°W
EST

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