The Moon and Mercury will make a close approach, passing within a mere 7.1 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Mercury, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 1 days old.
From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 17:41 (EDT), 12° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 33 minutes after the Sun at 18:52.
The Moon will be at mag -8.7; and Mercury will be at mag -0.6. Both objects will lie in the constellation Aquarius.
They 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.
At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Mercury 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 |
| The Moon | 23h14m30s | 3°56'S | Aquarius | -8.7 | 31'29"5 |
| Mercury | 23h14m10s | 3°50'S | Aquarius | -0.6 | 7"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 18° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.
The sky on 18 Feb 2026
| The sky on 18 February 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
4% 1 day old |
All times shown in EST.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Warning
Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.
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
| 07 Dec 2025 | – Mercury at greatest elongation west |
| 19 Feb 2026 | – Mercury at greatest elongation east |
| 20 Feb 2026 | – Mercury at highest altitude in evening sky |
| 27 Mar 2026 | – Mercury at highest altitude in morning sky |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.