The Moon Will Hide Jupiter in Broad Daylight Today, Here's How to Watch

Skywatchers can catch two Moon-Jupiter events today, September 8. Before sunrise, a slender waning crescent moon, just under 10% illuminated, will appear low in the east-northeast sky with Jupiter about 5 degrees below it, roughly half the width of a clenched fist held at arm's length. Jupiter rises shortly before 4 a.m. local daylight time and climbs higher as dawn approaches. The planet sits in the faint zodiacal constellation Cancer, which astronomer Dr Ken Franklin of New York's Hayden Planetarium used to describe as 'the empty space between the Sickle of Leo and the Gemini Twins.'

Later in the day comes a daytime occultation, when the thin waning crescent moon will hide Jupiter from view for much of North America. A swath of the western United States, roughly the area west and south of a line running from Bellingham, Washington, to Rockport, Texas, falls outside the occultation's visibility zone. Jupiter will disappear behind the moon's sunlit limb during the afternoon, with the moon taking roughly a minute or more to cross the planet's face, and Jupiter will reappear from the moon's dark edge about 50 minutes later, give or take 10 minutes.

Timing varies by location: Jupiter is set to vanish, moving from north to south, between 2:55 and 3:30 p.m. in the Eastern time zone, 1:45 and 2:20 p.m. Central, and 12:30 and 1:00 p.m. Mountain time. In a telescope, Jupiter will appear about one-sixtieth the diameter of the moon and considerably fainter, making it the harder of the two to locate once the sky has brightened; the easiest approach is to find the pair before sunrise and track them into daylight.

Skywatchers who miss the event get another chance: the moon and Jupiter will meet again on the morning of October 6, about eight hours earlier in the day, in a sight that will be easily visible before sunrise with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.