The Moon, Mars and Neptune will make a close approach, passing within 4°30' of each other. The Moon will be 8 days old.
From Fairfield , the trio will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:10 (EDT), 54° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 17:54, 56° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 23:25, when they sink below 10° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.0; Mars will be at mag 0.2; and Neptune will be at mag 7.9. The trio 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.
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 Mars 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 | 01h12m10s | 3°15'N | Pisces | -12.0 | 31'00"0 |
| Mars | 01h06m20s | 7°32'N | Pisces | 0.2 | 8"6 |
| Neptune | 01h21m10s | 6°44'N | Pisces | 7.9 | 2"3 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 92° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.
The sky on 12 Apr 2025
| The sky on 12 April 2025 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
99% 14 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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
| 15 Oct 2035 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
| 12 Oct 2037 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 11 Nov 2037 | – Mars at perigee |
| 19 Nov 2037 | – Mars at opposition |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.