Close approach of the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Appulses feed

Tags: Appulse

The Moon, Jupiter and Saturn will make a close approach, passing within 6°10' of each other. The Moon will be 20 days old.

From South El Monte , the trio will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 23:26, when they reach an altitude of 7° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 05:45, 77° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 06:17, 75° above your south-western horizon.

The Moon will be at mag -12.0; Jupiter will be at mag -2.3; and Saturn will be at mag -0.3. The trio will lie in the constellation Taurus.

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.

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 05h07m00s 27°48'N Taurus -12.0 29'37"0
Jupiter 05h21m00s 22°29'N Taurus -2.3 36"7
Saturn 05h08m50s 21°12'N Taurus -0.3 18"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 102° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 5 Jul 2026

The sky on 5 July 2026
Sunrise
05:43
Sunset
20:06
Twilight ends
21:50
Twilight begins
03:59


Waning Gibbous

62%

21 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:47 13:39 20:32
Venus 09:05 15:48 22:32
Moon 23:11 05:01 10:58
Mars 03:05 10:08 17:10
Jupiter 07:07 14:09 21:10
Saturn 00:41 06:53 13:04
All times shown in PDT.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE440 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

30 Jan 2119  –  Saturn ends retrograde motion
02 Oct 2119  –  Saturn enters retrograde motion
08 Dec 2119  –  Saturn at opposition
13 Feb 2120  –  Saturn 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