Home > Conjunction, Ephemeris Program, Naked-eye planets, Planetrary grouping, Twilight > Ephemeris: 04/20/2026 – A seeming convergence of planets too close to the Sun to be seen from Michigan

Ephemeris: 04/20/2026 – A seeming convergence of planets too close to the Sun to be seen from Michigan

April 20, 2026 Leave a comment Go to comments

This is Ephemeris for Monday, April 20th. Today the Sun will be up for 13 hours and 44 minutes, setting at 8:34, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:48. The Moon, halfway from new to first quarter, will set at 1:20 tomorrow morning.

There’s a close planetary alignment this happening and today in the morning sky that we can’t see, of Mercury Mars and Saturn which are too close to the sun, and the time of year is not the best for seeing them. So they’re invisible to us but visible for folks in the Southern Hemisphere. Even the Artemis 2 astronauts talked about them when they went into solar eclipse on their trip around the moon. But the action is all happening yesterday and today. As of last Friday they were, from left to right, Saturn Mars and Mercury. As of today it’s almost a vertical arrangement with Mars on top Saturn in the middle and Mercury on the bottom and by tomorrow it will be Mercury on the bottom Venus on the top and Saturn off to the right.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

The apparent convergence of three naked eye planets.
The apparent convergence of three naked eye planets which are invisible from our location in Northern Michigan, as being too close to the Sun and lost in morning twilight. Folks in the Southern Hemisphere may get a better view of it. This animation steps from April 16th through the 22nd at one day intervals, centered on Mars, as the planets Saturn and Mercury slowly switch places with respect to it. This image has an equatorial orientation with north directly up and west to the right. The orientation in the sky will be tilted about 45° to the left. Created using Stellarium and GIMP.
Categories: Conjunction, Ephemeris Program, Naked-eye planets, Planetrary grouping, Twilight Tags: , ,
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