The planets Venus and Mars will make a close approach, passing within a mere 23.2 arcminutes of each other.

From South El Monte , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 13° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 20:44 (PDT), 13° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 0 minutes after the Sun at 21:55.

Venus will be at mag -4.0; and Mars will be at mag 1.8. Both objects will lie in the constellation Leo.

They 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.

At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.

A graph of the angular separation between Venus 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:

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 37° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.

The sky on 26 Jul 2026

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.

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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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