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 a mere 13.5 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Jupiter, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 16 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will be visible between 19:35 and 06:24. They will become accessible at around 19:35, when they rise to an altitude of 7° above your eastern horizon. They will reach their highest point in the sky at 01:00, 50° above your southern horizon. They will become inaccessible at around 06:24 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 -2.9. Both objects will lie in the constellation Cetus.

They 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.

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 00h35m00s 2°15'N Cetus -12.8 32'44"5
Jupiter 00h35m20s 2°02'N Cetus -2.9 48"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 175° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 28 Sep 2034

The sky on 28 September 2034
Sunrise
06:43
Sunset
18:39
Twilight ends
20:11
Twilight begins
05:11

16-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

99%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:46 13:59 19:12
Venus 09:36 14:25 19:14
Moon 18:38 00:47 07:04
Mars 05:35 11:53 18:12
Jupiter 18:49 01:00 07:10
Saturn 01:27 08:43 16:00
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.

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01 Oct 2034  –  Jupiter at opposition
28 Nov 2034  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
09 Sep 2035  –  Jupiter enters 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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