The Moon, Venus and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within 3°36' of each other. The Moon will be 27 days old.
From South El Monte , the trio will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 04:14 (PST) – 2 hours and 41 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 22° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:38.
The Moon will be at mag -10.5; Venus will be at mag -4.1; and Jupiter will be at mag -1.9. The trio will lie in the constellation Ophiuchus.
They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.
At around the same time, the trio will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Venus around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the trio at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 17h36m20s | 18°13'S | Ophiuchus | -10.5 | 32'55"7 |
| Venus | 17h32m40s | 21°44'S | Ophiuchus | -4.1 | 14"0 |
| Jupiter | 17h35m30s | 22°52'S | Ophiuchus | -1.9 | 32"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 40° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.
The sky on 29 Dec 2025
| The sky on 29 December 2025 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
78% 10 days old |
All times shown in PST.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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
| 20 Jul 1959 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
| 19 Apr 1960 | – Jupiter enters retrograde motion |
| 19 Jun 1960 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 20 Aug 1960 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.