Venus and Mars will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 6°45' to the south of Mars.
From South El Monte however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 5° above the horizon at dusk.
Venus will be at mag -4.4, and Mars at mag 1.8, both in the constellation Leo.
The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.
A graph of the angular separation between Venus and Mars 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 |
| Venus | 11h02m40s | 0°22'N | Leo | -4.4 | 47"8 |
| Mars | 11h02m40s | 7°08'N | Leo | 1.8 | 3"7 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 28° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.
The sky on 20 May 2026
| The sky on 20 May 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
24% 4 days old |
All times shown in PDT.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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.
Related news
| 19 Dec 1958 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
| 20 Nov 1960 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 24 Dec 1960 | – Mars at perigee |
| 30 Dec 1960 | – Mars at opposition |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.