Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Jupiter and Saturn will share the same right ascension, with Jupiter passing 45' to the north of Saturn.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 19:07 (EDT), 69° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 02:10.

Jupiter will be at mag -2.3 in the constellation Taurus, and Saturn at mag -0.2 in the neighbouring constellation of Orion.

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

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

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Jupiter 05h52m50s 23°23'N Taurus -2.3 38"0
Saturn 05h52m50s 22°38'N Orion -0.2 18"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 89° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 3 Apr 2025

The sky on 3 April 2025
Sunrise
06:21
Sunset
19:12
Twilight ends
20:49
Twilight begins
04:43


Waxing Crescent

44%

5 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:41 11:43 17:45
Venus 05:10 11:30 17:50
Moon 09:36 17:49 02:02
Mars 12:01 19:40 03:19
Jupiter 09:22 16:54 00:26
Saturn 05:49 11:38 17:26
All times shown in EDT.

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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