The Moon, Jupiter and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 1°10' of each other. The Moon will be 21 days old.
From South El Monte , the trio will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 23:32, when they reach an altitude of 7° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 05:22, 66° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 06:29, 61° above your south-western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.0; Jupiter will be at mag -2.0; and Mars will be at mag 0.4. The trio will lie in the constellation Leo.
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 Jupiter 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 | 10h42m20s | 8°46'N | Leo | -12.0 | 29'34"2 |
| Jupiter | 10h38m50s | 9°32'N | Leo | -2.0 | 34"5 |
| Mars | 10h44m40s | 10°39'N | Leo | 0.4 | 8"1 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 99° from the Sun, which is in Ophiuchus at this time of year.
The sky on 16 Dec 2025
| The sky on 16 December 2025 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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5% 27 days old |
All times shown in PST.
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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
| 02 Mar 1978 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
| 15 Jan 1980 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 24 Feb 1980 | – Mars at opposition |
| 25 Feb 1980 | – Mars at perigee |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.