The moon will meet Jupiter tonight in a wonderful encounter after Thanksgiving.
The moon will be almost completely illuminated during the meeting, and the full moon will rise just two nights from Monday, November 27. From New York City, the meeting between the Moon and Jupiter will be visible shortly after it rises in the east. At approximately 3:40 PM EST (2040 GMT). in the sky. The 12-day-old Moon will be less than 5 degrees north of Jupiter, and both celestial bodies are located in the constellation Pisces, Pisces.
During a close encounter, both objects will be very bright and unmistakable in the night sky. The Moon would have a magnitude of -11.7, while Jupiter, the solar system’s largest planet, would have a magnitude of -2.8, with the minus prefix indicating particularly bright objects above Earth.
The celestial objects will disappear from view in the west at around 5 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT) on Saturday, November 25.
Related: Night sky November 2023: What you can see tonight
Despite this being a close approach — officially referred to as a “pulse” — the 93% illuminated gibbous Moon will still be separated from Jupiter too widely to fit within the telescope’s narrow field of view. However, the two celestial objects should be visible together in the binoculars’ wider field of view.
This close proximity is also a result of our view from Earth, the proximity of the Moon, and its distance from Jupiter. The two bodies remain largely separated in the actual solar system.
The Moon is about 238,855 miles (384,400 km) away from Earth, while Jupiter is on average 444 million miles (715 million km) away. As a result, the Earth-Moon system would fit the average distance between our planet and Jupiter by about 1,858 times.
At its farthest point, Jupiter is about 601 million miles (967 million kilometers) from Earth and the Moon, and even when it is at its furthest point from our world, the giant gas planet is still 365 million miles (588 million kilometers) away. Therefore, the variation in distance between Earth and Jupiter ranges by 236 million miles, and this variation in distance alone is large enough to accommodate the Earth-Moon system within it 988 times!
If you’re hoping to catch a glimpse of the moon in conjunction with Jupiter, here are our guides The best telescopes And Best binoculars It’s a great place to start.
If you’re looking to take photos of Night sky In general, check out our guides on how to photograph planets or how to photograph the Moon, as well as our lists of things to do The best cameras for astrophotography And Best lenses for astrophotography.
Editor’s note: If you’ve taken a photo of the Moon and Jupiter and would like to share it with Space.com readers, send your photo(s), comments, name and location to [email protected].
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