When is the Mars and Jupiter conjunction in November 2026?

Mars and Jupiter come closest on the morning of 16 November 2026, about 1.2° apart, a little more than twice the width of the full Moon. The best views are before dawn on 15 and 16 November, high in the south-southeast, and the gap stays under 1.6° from 13 to 18 November, so a cloudy morning isn’t the end of it.

Both planets are in Leo, next to its brightest star, Regulus. You don’t need a telescope. Jupiter is the dazzling white one. Mars is the fainter orange point about a degree above Jupiter as you face south.

The conjunction at a glance

	Expected
Closest approach	16 Nov, about 02:04 UT, 1.2° apart
Best mornings	15 and 16 Nov; under 1.6° from 13 to 18 Nov
Brightness	Jupiter −2.1, Mars +0.7 (Jupiter about 13 times brighter)
Where	Leo, about 4° from Regulus
Moon	Sets in the evening; dark sky before dawn

Times for your city

The pair rises around 11 p.m. and climbs all night. The best moment is the last dark hour before sunrise, when they stand highest.

City	Planets rise (15 Nov)	1 hour before sunrise (16 Nov)
New York	11:14 p.m.	5:44 a.m., 62° up, south-southeast
Los Angeles	11:23 p.m.	5:26 a.m., 68° up, south-southeast
London	10:53 p.m.	6:20 a.m., 52° up, south
Tokyo	11:09 p.m.	5:17 a.m., 66° up, south-southeast
Sydney	1:44 a.m. (16 Nov)	4:43 a.m., 31° up, northeast

I calculated these with the open-source Astronomy Engine library and checked them against timeanddate.com for New York; they match to the minute. Rise times are for a flat horizon, so add a little for hills or buildings.

The exact minute of closest approach, 02:04 UT, matters less than you’d think. In New York that is 9:04 p.m. on the 15th, and in Tokyo it is late morning on the 16th, both times when the planets are down. In London (2:04 a.m.) and continental Europe (3:04 a.m.) they’re already up. The separation changes by only a few hundredths of a degree over a day, so the mornings on either side look the same to the eye.

In the Southern Hemisphere the view is flipped and lower: from Sydney, Mars sits below Jupiter, low in the northeast, about 30° up before dawn.

How to tell Mars from Jupiter (and Regulus)

Three bright points sit together here, so check the colours. Jupiter at magnitude −2.1 is the brightest thing in that part of the sky. Mars at +0.7 is clearly orange. Regulus, at 1.4, is blue-white and slightly fainter than Mars. Japan’s national observatory (NAOJ) describes the three as a long, thin isosceles triangle in mid-November.

Watch it change over the following mornings. Mars keeps moving east, passes Jupiter, and by 26 November sits under 2° from Regulus. On 30 November and 1 December the waning Moon, close to last quarter, joins the group.

Through binoculars both planets fit in one field. A small telescope at low power shows Jupiter’s cloud belts and up to four of its big moons, with Mars in the same view. Mars will look like a tiny orange disc: it’s about 195 million km away, while Jupiter is about 790 million km away, so the closeness is pure line of sight.

Bonus: four planets before sunrise

From about mid-November, the same pre-dawn sky has more. Venus blazes low in the southeast and reaches its greatest brilliance (magnitude −4.9) on 30 November, according to NAOJ. Mercury reaches greatest western elongation around 20 to 21 November, very low and to the lower left of Venus. Draw a line from Mercury through Venus up to Jupiter and Mars and you are tracing the ecliptic. More about lineups like this in planetary alignments: what you can see.

If you’re out on the morning of 18 November, the Leonid meteor shower peaks that night, and its radiant is in Leo, right next to the planets.

How Sky Map helps

I build Sky Map, so weigh this with that in mind. Point the AR view southeast before dawn and it labels Mars, Jupiter and Regulus over the camera image, so you know which dot is which. The planet visibility timeline shows when each planet rises, and Tonight’s Sky Conditions gives cloud cover for your location. Without a sky app, a plain rule works too: the brightest “star” high in the south before dawn this month is Jupiter. Sky Map: Constellation Finder is free to download on the App Store, with some features paid; more on the Sky Map app page. For other nights, see which planets are visible tonight.

How rare is this?

Mars laps Jupiter in the sky every 2 to 2.5 years on average, says the Royal Observatory Greenwich, but close pairings are less common. The observatory names one of the closest on record, in 1761, when the two merged into a single point of light to the naked eye. At 1.2°, this year’s pairing is wide enough to see as two points and tight enough to fit a binocular view.

Sources: NAOJ: Mars and Jupiter close approach, November 2026 (16 November, 1.2°, magnitudes, Regulus triangle), NAOJ: November 2026 sky calendar (Mercury elongation, Venus greatest brilliance), NAOJ: Moon near Mars and Jupiter (30 November to 1 December); Royal Observatory Greenwich: Night sky highlights, November 2026 (pinkie width, frequency, 1761, telescope advice); BBC Sky at Night Magazine: Mars and Jupiter, November 2026 (14 to 17 November, Mars north of Jupiter, 26 November); The Planetary Society: November 2026 night sky (Mercury, Moon on 30 November); WhatTheStar: Mars and Jupiter 1.2° apart (02:04 UT); timeanddate.com: night sky in New York (rise-time check). City times, altitudes and distances: my calculation with Astronomy Engine. Checked 4 November 2026. All times are predictions.