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 Saturn

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon and Saturn will make a close approach, passing within 6°03' of each other. The Moon will be 11 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 16:54 (EST), 28° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 20:17, 48° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 01:20, when they sink below 10° above your western horizon.

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 -12.5 in Pisces; and Saturn will be at mag 0.5 in Cetus.

They 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.

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 Saturn 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 00h22m10s 6°07'N Pisces -12.5 31'31"9
Saturn 00h33m10s 0°43'N Cetus 0.5 18"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 129° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.

The sky on 20 Nov 2026

The sky on 20 November 2026
Sunrise
06:38
Sunset
16:17
Twilight ends
17:56
Twilight begins
05:00

11-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

85%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:55 10:13 15:31
Venus 03:43 09:12 14:40
Moon 13:48 20:16 02:58
Mars 22:51 05:47 12:44
Jupiter 22:45 05:40 12:34
Saturn 14:11 20:17 02:23
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 Dec 2026  –  Saturn ends retrograde motion
09 Aug 2027  –  Saturn enters retrograde motion
17 Oct 2027  –  Saturn 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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Cambridge

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Longitude:
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42.38°N
71.11°W
EST

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