The Moon, Jupiter and Mars will make a close approach, passing within a mere 26.5 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Jupiter, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 2 days old.
From South El Monte , the trio will become visible at around 17:48 (PDT), 18° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 54 minutes after the Sun at 19:26.
The Moon will be at mag -9.3; Jupiter will be at mag -2.1; and Mars will be at mag 1.2. The trio will lie in the constellation Aquarius.
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 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 | 22h59m50s | 7°03'S | Aquarius | -9.3 | 31'36"6 |
| Jupiter | 23h00m40s | 7°26'S | Aquarius | -2.1 | 32"9 |
| Mars | 23h00m20s | 7°18'S | Aquarius | 1.2 | 4"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 24° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.
The sky on 12 Sep 2025
| The sky on 12 September 2025 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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66% 20 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.
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| 29 Nov 1951 | – Jupiter 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.