The moon will meet up with Jupiter tonight, making a close approach to the solar system's largest planet in the night sky.
At around the same time as the close approach happens , the two celestial bodies will also join in an arrangement astronomers call a conjunction, meaning they share the celestial equivalent of longitude in the sky known as right ascension.
On Monday, the moon will have a magnitude of -12.3, while Jupiter will have a magnitude of -2.7 . Clearly, the moon will outshine Jupiter in the night sky and dominates it in terms of size by quite a large margin. This is a result of the fact the moon is much closer to Earth than the fifth planet from the sun, Jupiter.
In terms of actual size, the moon is much smaller than Jupiter is, meaning if the two celestial bodies were at equal distances from Earth, the gas giant would easily rule the night sky over our planet, dominating the moon. Jupiter has a width of around 89,000 miles making it 11 times the size of Earth. Our planet is itself around four times as large as the moon, which has a diameter of around 2,200 miles . That means to stretch across the equator of Jupiter it would take at least 44 moons.
Jupiter is so vast that it has moons that are larger than not only our moon but even a solar system planet. The largest Jovian moon,
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