The Moon and Mercury will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 10' to the south of Mercury. The Moon will be 1 days old.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From South El Monte , the pair will become visible at around 19:17 (PDT), 12° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 26 minutes after the Sun at 20:22.
The Moon will be at mag -8.8, and Mercury at mag -0.4, both in the constellation Pisces.
The pair 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.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Mercury 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 | 00h36m40s | 6°01'N | Pisces | -8.8 | 33'21"7 |
| Mercury | 00h36m40s | 6°11'N | Pisces | -0.4 | 7"3 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 18° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.
The sky on 20 May 2025
| The sky on 20 May 2025 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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42% 23 days old |
All times shown in PDT.
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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
| 13 Mar 2051 | – Mercury at greatest elongation east |
| 27 Apr 2051 | – Mercury at greatest elongation west |
| 28 Apr 2051 | – Mercury at highest altitude in morning sky |
| 03 Jul 2051 | – Mercury at highest altitude in evening sky |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.