The Moon, Jupiter and Neptune will make a close approach, passing within 4°50' of each other. The Moon will be 14 days old.
From South El Monte , the trio will be visible between 18:05 and 06:25. They will become accessible at around 18:05, when they rise to an altitude of 7° above your eastern horizon. They will reach their highest point in the sky at 00:15, 73° above your southern horizon. They will become inaccessible at around 06:25 when they sink below 7° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.6; Jupiter will be at mag -2.6; and Neptune will be at mag 7.8. The trio will lie in the constellation Cancer.
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 Jupiter 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 | 08h52m50s | 13°21'N | Cancer | -12.6 | 29'42"4 |
| Jupiter | 08h59m30s | 17°55'N | Cancer | -2.6 | 44"5 |
| Neptune | 09h07m50s | 16°32'N | Cancer | 7.8 | 2"3 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 175° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.
The sky on 4 May 2026
| The sky on 4 May 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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86% 18 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.
Related news
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| 01 Feb 2086 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 02 Apr 2086 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
| 02 Jan 2087 | – Jupiter enters 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.