The Moon and Saturn will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 5°27' to the south of Saturn. The Moon will be 17 days old.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From Los Angeles , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 21:56, when they reach an altitude of 9° above your south-eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 02:05, 36° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 04:42, 24° above your south-western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.7 in the constellation Scorpius, and Saturn at mag 0.0 in the neighbouring constellation of Ophiuchus.
The pair 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.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon 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 |
| The Moon | 16h29m20s | 25°12'S | Scorpius | -12.7 | 33'07"8 |
| Saturn | 16h29m20s | 19°45'S | Ophiuchus | 0.0 | 18"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 146° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.
The sky on 12 May 2025
| The sky on 12 May 2025 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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99% 15 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.
Related news
| 19 Mar 1986 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 27 May 1986 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 06 Aug 1986 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 30 Mar 1987 | – Saturn enters 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.