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

Conjunction of Jupiter and Mars

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed

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The sky at

Jupiter and Mars will share the same right ascension, with Jupiter passing 11' to the north of Mars.

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

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 16:46 (EDT), 34° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 17:07, 34° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 21:18, when they sink below 10° above your south-western horizon.

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Jupiter will be at mag -2.4, and Mars at mag 0.3, both in the constellation Aquarius.

The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Jupiter and Mars 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
Jupiter 22h07m50s 12°42'S Aquarius -2.4 38"1
Mars 22h07m50s 12°54'S Aquarius 0.3 7"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 80° from the Sun, which is in Ophiuchus at this time of year.

The sky on 1 Dec 2033

The sky on 1 December 2033
Sunrise
06:51
Sunset
16:11
Twilight ends
17:52
Twilight begins
05:10

9-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

73%

9 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:51 10:42 15:33
Venus 06:11 10:58 15:45
Moon 13:14 19:40 02:14
Mars 11:53 17:09 22:24
Jupiter 11:52 17:08 22:23
Saturn 19:00 02:29 09:57
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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23 Oct 2033  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
02 Aug 2034  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
01 Oct 2034  –  Jupiter at opposition
28 Nov 2034  –  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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Cambridge

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42.38°N
71.11°W
EDT

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