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 7.1 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 San Diego , the pair will become visible at around 17:55 (PDT), 12° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 24 minutes after the Sun at 19:00.

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 -8.7; and Mercury will be at mag -0.6. Both objects 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 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 23h14m30s 3°56'S Aquarius -8.7 31'29"5
Mercury 23h14m10s 3°50'S Aquarius -0.6 7"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 18° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 18 Feb 2026

The sky on 18 February 2026
Sunrise
06:26
Sunset
17:36
Twilight ends
18:58
Twilight begins
05:03

1-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

4%

1 day old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:14 13:07 18:59
Venus 07:03 12:42 18:21
Moon 07:07 13:03 19:07
Mars 06:04 11:26 16:47
Jupiter 13:52 20:58 04:04
Saturn 07:59 13:57 19:55
All times shown in PST.

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.

Related news

07 Dec 2025  –  Mercury at greatest elongation west
19 Feb 2026  –  Mercury at greatest elongation east
20 Feb 2026  –  Mercury at highest altitude in evening sky
29 Mar 2026  –  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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San Diego

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Longitude:
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32.72°N
117.16°W
PDT

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