Conjunction of Venus and Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and Jupiter will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 28' to the south of Jupiter.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From South El Monte , the pair will become visible at around 19:24 (PDT), 11° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 15 minutes after the Sun at 20:23.

Venus will be at mag -3.9, and Jupiter at mag -1.7, both in the constellation Virgo.

The pair 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.

A graph of the angular separation between Venus and Jupiter 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
Venus 12h46m00s 4°12'S Virgo -3.9 11"6
Jupiter 12h46m00s 3°43'S Virgo -1.7 30"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 28° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.

The sky on 5 Apr 2026

The sky on 5 April 2026
Sunrise
06:31
Sunset
19:15
Twilight ends
20:41
Twilight begins
05:06


Waning Gibbous

79%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:29 11:14 16:59
Venus 07:34 14:15 20:55
Moon 22:14 03:14 08:08
Mars 05:48 11:44 17:41
Jupiter 11:53 19:03 02:12
Saturn 06:16 12:20 18:23
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

26 May 2064  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
22 Feb 2065  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
24 Apr 2065  –  Jupiter at opposition
26 Jun 2065  –  Jupiter 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