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 Cambridge however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 9° above the horizon at dawn.

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 3 Apr 2025

The sky on 3 April 2025
Sunrise
06:21
Sunset
19:12
Twilight ends
20:49
Twilight begins
04:43


Waxing Crescent

44%

5 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:41 11:43 17:45
Venus 05:10 11:30 17:50
Moon 09:36 17:49 02:02
Mars 12:01 19:40 03:19
Jupiter 09:22 16:54 00:26
Saturn 05:49 11:38 17:26
All times shown in EDT.

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