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, Jupiter and Mars

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon, Jupiter and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 4°39' of each other. The Moon will be 6 days old.

From Cambridge , the trio will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 16:32 (EST), 33° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 17:13, 34° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 21:35, 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 -11.8 in Capricornus; Jupiter will be at mag -2.4 in Aquarius; and Mars will be at mag 0.2 in Aquarius.

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 trio 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 trio at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
The Moon 21h56m10s 8°55'S Capricornus -11.8 31'39"0
Jupiter 22h06m40s 12°49'S Aquarius -2.4 38"4
Mars 22h01m30s 13°32'S Aquarius 0.2 8"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 81° from the Sun, which is in Scorpius at this time of year.

The sky on 28 Nov 2033

The sky on 28 November 2033
Sunrise
06:47
Sunset
16:12
Twilight ends
17:52
Twilight begins
05:07

6-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

48%

6 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:38 10:35 15:32
Venus 06:03 10:54 15:45
Moon 11:36 17:05 22:41
Mars 12:00 17:12 22:25
Jupiter 12:03 17:18 22:33
Saturn 19:13 02:41 10:09
All times shown in EST.

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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15 Sep 2035  –  Mars 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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42.38°N
71.11°W
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