The Moon, 134340 Pluto, Saturn and Neptune will make a close approach, passing within 3°17' of each other. The Moon will be 5 days old.
From Columbus , the quartet will become visible at around 18:08 (EDT), 39° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 22:06.
The Moon will be at mag -11.0; 134340 Pluto will be at mag 0.0; Saturn will be at mag 1.0; and Neptune will be at mag 7.9. The quartet will lie in the constellation Pisces.
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 the Moon and 134340 Pluto around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the quartet at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 23h46m50s | 0°20'N | Pisces | -11.0 | 31'23"7 |
| 134340 Pluto | 00h00m00s | 0°00'N | Pisces | 0.0 | 0"0 |
| Saturn | 23h54m10s | 3°01'S | Pisces | 1.0 | 16"5 |
| Neptune | 00h00m20s | 1°23'S | Pisces | 7.9 | 2"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The quartet will be at an angular separation of 54° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.
The sky on 23 Jan 2026
| The sky on 23 January 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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25% 5 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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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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Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.