Jupiter and gibbous Moon pairing

Event Date: December 25th

Time: 4:00 AM/5:00 PM

Brief

   Merry Christmas...to all who observe (the holiday that is, not only what is in the sky)!  As mentioned yesterday, a special treat will be visible, having already risen in the east-northeast about the time of Sunset.  Before that, we can see them before dawn, setting in the west-northwest.  If you saw them rise yesterday, and remember that the Moon moves west to east about one diameter per hour, perhaps you were able to visualize the separation of the two.  Take a look at image one, and find out if you are correct!  The separation then, is 6.9º from the Moon's center to much further (therefore smaller as seen from Earth), Jupiter. 

To clean up the appearance, I omitted the orbits and celestial guidelines.  The washed out, yet ever-popular Pleiades cluster forms a triangle with them.  The three fit in an 11º field, which is almost too wide for many types of binoculars.

Detailed

   Comparing to yesterday's showing, the Moon has spent 11 hours moving about 5º closer to Jupiter.  Now, let's take a look at the evening image, when the Moon is even closer.  This is impressive, and not only binocular friendly, yet telescope friendly, provided that a telescope used has a low f-ratio and/or a large apparent field-of-view for the eyepiece used.  I will set the time back to that of yesterday evening, and we see here that the two are only a separation of about 1.4º from center to center.  Since the Moon is about 1/2º in diameter and therefore 1/4º in radius, it means that the space between the Moon and Jupiter is only a little over a degree apart.  Take a look at the zoom-in following the zoom-out shown first.  For the zoom-in to follow, I included a wide field of 2º (about magnitude 25x) to include both.

Also for the zoom-out, I also kept the Pleiades cluster in, which can be seen slightly more easily each evening after this, as the Moon moves a little further away [angularly], and starts to wane faster in a few days.
   Finally, the closest approach between the two are early in the afternoon today, Pacific Standard Time, when the Moon is within 0.4º of the Moon.  According to a note on my Starry Night software, providing the images below, the Moon will occult Jupiter "as seen from central South America and Southern Africa".

click on images to enlarge: courtesy of Starry Night Pro Plus, version 6.4.3, by Simulation Curriculum Corp.