The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Close approach of the Moon and Mercury

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon and Mercury will make a close approach, passing within a mere 20.5 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Mercury, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 1 days old.

From Ashburn , the pair will become visible at around 18:17 (EDT), 11° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 19 minutes after the Sun at 19:19.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

The Moon will be at mag -8.5; and Mercury will be at mag -1.0. Both objects will lie in the constellation Pisces.

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 the Moon and Mercury around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
The Moon 23h46m20s 1°33'S Pisces -8.5 32'57"6
Mercury 23h45m40s 1°15'S Pisces -1.0 6"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 15° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 28 Feb 2025

The sky on 28 February 2025
Sunrise
06:41
Sunset
18:00
Twilight ends
19:30
Twilight begins
05:12

30-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

3%

30 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:20 13:17 19:15
Venus 07:25 14:02 20:39
Moon 07:06 12:58 19:01
Mars 13:11 20:48 04:24
Jupiter 10:56 18:15 01:34
Saturn 07:17 13:02 18:46
All times shown in EST.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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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19 Apr 2025  –  Mercury at highest altitude in morning sky

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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Ashburn

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Longitude:
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39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

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