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

Conjunction of the Moon and Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed

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The sky at

The Moon and Jupiter will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 4'05" to the south of Jupiter. The Moon will be 9 days old.

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

From Columbus , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:26 (EST), 45° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 18:55, 50° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 00:14, when they sink below 7° above your western horizon.

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The Moon will be at mag -12.1, and Jupiter at mag -2.5, both in the constellation Pisces.

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 the Moon and Jupiter 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
The Moon 00h17m40s 0°22'N Pisces -12.1 31'42"8
Jupiter 00h17m40s 0°26'N Pisces -2.5 40"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 97° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 19 Dec 2034

The sky on 19 December 2034
Sunrise
07:46
Sunset
17:07
Twilight ends
18:45
Twilight begins
06:08

9-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

61%

9 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:38 13:08 17:38
Venus 03:56 09:17 14:38
Moon 13:15 19:31 01:55
Mars 04:18 09:28 14:37
Jupiter 12:50 18:55 00:59
Saturn 19:52 03:05 10:17
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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04 Jan 2036  –  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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Columbus

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39.96°N
83.00°W
EST

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