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 Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within 3°54' of each other. The Moon will be 10 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:57 (EDT), 53° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 20:26, 71° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 03:05, when they sink below 7° above your north-western horizon.

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The Moon will be at mag -12.5; and Jupiter will be at mag -2.5. Both objects will lie in the constellation Gemini.

They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will 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 Jupiter 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 07h07m50s 26°47'N Gemini -12.5 32'08"6
Jupiter 07h05m00s 22°56'N Gemini -2.5 42"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 126° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 27 Feb 2026

The sky on 27 February 2026
Sunrise
06:28
Sunset
17:40
Twilight ends
19:12
Twilight begins
04:56

10-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

84%

10 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:46 12:48 18:50
Venus 07:06 12:52 18:39
Moon 13:18 21:16 05:02
Mars 06:07 11:22 16:37
Jupiter 12:56 20:26 03:56
Saturn 07:32 13:30 19:28
All times shown in EST.

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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10 Jan 2026  –  Jupiter at opposition
10 Mar 2026  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
12 Dec 2026  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
10 Feb 2027  –  Jupiter at opposition

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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Fairfield

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41.14°N
73.26°W
EDT

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