The planets Jupiter and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 5°57' of each other.
From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 22:11, when they reach an altitude of 8° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 03:17, 52° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 06:15, 33° above your south-western horizon.
Jupiter will be at mag -2.3; and Mars will be at mag -0.5. Both objects will lie in the constellation Virgo.
They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.
A graph of the angular separation between Jupiter and Mars 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 | 12h51m00s | 3°52'S | Virgo | -2.3 | 40"3 |
| Mars | 12h33m30s | 0°08'N | Virgo | -0.5 | 11"4 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 129° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.
The sky on 28 Apr 2026
| The sky on 28 April 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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96% 12 days old |
All times shown in PDT.
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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.