Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Jupiter and Saturn will share the same right ascension, with Jupiter passing 13' to the south of Saturn.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From South El Monte , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 13° above the horizon. They will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 04:46 (PDT) – 1 hour and 48 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 13° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:04.

Jupiter will be at mag -1.9, and Saturn at mag 0.5, both in the constellation Sagittarius.

The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Jupiter and Saturn 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
Jupiter 19h50m40s 21°11'S Sagittarius -1.9 32"4
Saturn 19h50m40s 20°57'S Sagittarius 0.5 15"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 34° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 1 Jul 2025

The sky on 1 July 2025
Sunrise
05:41
Sunset
20:07
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:57


Waxing Crescent

46%

6 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:46 14:43 21:41
Venus 03:01 09:51 16:41
Moon 12:09 18:15 00:12
Mars 10:21 16:50 23:19
Jupiter 05:21 12:31 19:42
Saturn 00:22 06:21 12:20
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

15 Sep 1960  –  Saturn ends retrograde motion
09 May 1961  –  Saturn enters retrograde motion
19 Jul 1961  –  Saturn at opposition
27 Sep 1961  –  Saturn 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.

Share