Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Jupiter and Saturn will share the same right ascension, with Jupiter passing 1°08' to the south of Saturn.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 00:00, when they reach an altitude of 11° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 05:01, 54° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 06:24, 49° above your south-western horizon.

Jupiter will be at mag -2.1, and Saturn at mag 0.6, both in the constellation Virgo.

The pair 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.

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 12h40m40s 2°53'S Virgo -2.1 37"6
Saturn 12h40m40s 1°45'S Virgo 0.6 17"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 103° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 26 Aug 2025

The sky on 26 August 2025
Sunrise
06:19
Sunset
19:25
Twilight ends
20:53
Twilight begins
04:50


Waxing Crescent

17%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:03 11:51 18:40
Venus 03:44 10:43 17:43
Moon 09:40 15:25 21:03
Mars 09:25 15:15 21:06
Jupiter 02:35 09:43 16:50
Saturn 20:39 02:36 08:33
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

22 Jul 1980  –  Saturn ring plane crossing
18 Jan 1981  –  Saturn enters retrograde motion
26 Mar 1981  –  Saturn at opposition
04 Jun 1981  –  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