Mars and Neptune will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 2°52' to the north of Neptune.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 23:04, when they reach an altitude of 21° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 03:56, 70° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:38, 59° above your south-western horizon.

Mars will be at mag -0.3, and Neptune at mag 7.9, both in the constellation Leo.

The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Mars and Neptune around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 120° from the Sun, which is in Ophiuchus at this time of year.

The sky on 5 May 2026

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.

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