The planets Jupiter and Saturn will make a close approach, passing within 4°41' of each other.
From Columbus , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 01:08 (EDT) and reaching an altitude of 29° above the southern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:36.
Jupiter will be at mag -2.5 in Sagittarius; and Saturn will be at mag 0.3 in Capricornus.
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.
A graph of the angular separation between Jupiter and Saturn around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| Jupiter | 19h56m00s | 20°56'S | Sagittarius | -2.5 | 42"0 |
| Saturn | 20h15m30s | 19°55'S | Capricornus | 0.3 | 17"4 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 120° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.
The sky on 18 May 2020
| The sky on 18 May 2020 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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14% 25 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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.
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| 23 May 2021 | – Saturn enters 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.