Conjunctions

How to Photograph a Conjunction: the Moon and Venus, Planet Pairings and Close Approaches

By Still DarkPublished Sep 11, 2026Updated Sep 11, 202613 min read

A conjunction is two bright things close together in the sky: a crescent Moon beside Venus in the evening twilight, Jupiter and Mars a finger-width apart before dawn, or the Moon passing in front of a planet. A Moon and Venus conjunction is about the easiest thing in the night sky to photograph. You don't need a dark sky, a tracker or a long drive. It's still hard to get exactly right, because the two objects are rarely the same brightness and the best light lasts about twenty minutes.

What a conjunction is, and how close is close

Strictly, two objects are in conjunction when they have the same right ascension (the same celestial longitude), so one is due north or south of the other on the sky's grid. Some almanacs use ecliptic longitude instead, which can change the time by hours. Neither is exactly the moment the two look closest, which is called the appulse or closest approach. None of this matters much for a photograph. The pairing looks good for an evening either side, and the number you need is the separation.

Separation is measured in degrees, and you can measure it with your hand. A fist at arm's length covers about 10° of sky, three middle fingers cover 5°, and the tip of a little finger covers about 1°. The full Moon is only half a degree across, so a "close" conjunction of 1° is two Moon-widths, and a very close one of 0.3° is a gap narrower than the Moon itself. A degree is 60 arcminutes (′), and an arcminute is 60 arcseconds (″).

The Moon goes around the whole sky in 27.3 days. It moves eastward about 13° a day, which is its own width every hour. The planets move much more slowly, so each month the Moon passes every planet that's up at night. That's why "Moon and Venus tonight" comes around about once a month while Venus is visible, and why the Moon–Jupiter conjunctions of late 2026 and early 2027 come every 27–28 days.

Which pairings are worth photographing

• A young crescent (1–4 days old) beside Venus or Jupiter in evening twilight. The sky is still blue, there's colour on the horizon, and the Moon's night side glows with earthshine. Earthshine is sunlight reflected off a nearly full Earth, and it's easiest to see in the days either side of new Moon. The old crescent before dawn gives you the same scene in the morning.
• A crescent within a degree or two of a planet, close enough for a 200–400 mm lens to fit both in the frame.
• Planet–planet meetings. Venus and Jupiter, the two brightest planets, pass each other about once a year, though some of these pairings happen too close to the Sun to see. The June 8–9, 2026 pairing in the western evening sky was a good one, but the 2027 one is lost in the Sun's glare. Venus passes Mars or Saturn whenever its path through the twilight takes it past the slower planet. Both objects are points of similar brightness, so one exposure is enough.
• Occultations, where the Moon covers a planet or bright star (more below).

A gibbous or full Moon beside a planet doesn't photograph as well. The Moon is so bright that in most exposures you get a white disc and a dot.

Conjunction dates for 2026 and 2027, and how to find them

Check the altitude as well as the separation. Below 5° the pair is lost in haze, and 10–20° is high enough. A 3° pairing at 15° with a two-day-old crescent makes a better photograph than a 0.5° one that sets before the sky gets dark.

The dates below are from Fred Espenak's Astropixels almanac (geocentric, UT), with the separation at the moment of conjunction. Where an occultation is marked, the Moon covers the object for some part of the world. The app works out which part, and the local time of closest approach, for your coordinates. The monthly Moon–Saturn and Moon–Mars passes aren't listed here but are in the app.

Venus passes inferior conjunction on Oct 24, 2026, is a morning object through the first half of 2027, and returns to the evening sky after superior conjunction on Aug 11, 2027. So every 2027 Moon and Venus conjunction is a morning event until autumn. Our guide to why Venus is so bright explains the whole cycle.

The twilight window, and camera settings by scene

A crescent and a planet together cover about ten stops of brightness. The sunlit limb is as bright as a sunlit landscape, Venus at magnitude −4 shows up in almost any exposure, and the earthshine is thousands of times fainter than the limb. You can't get all three in one frame, so pick the one that matters most to you and bracket for the others.

Good timing helps a lot. With the Sun 3–8° below the horizon, about 20 to 60 minutes after sunset at mid-latitudes, the sky is dark enough to show the earthshine but still bright enough to balance the crescent, and there's still some colour on the horizon (see our twilight guide for the stages). Fifteen minutes later the sky is black, the crescent overexposes and the pair is dropping into the haze. For morning pairings the window runs the other way, so get there early and be set up before the sky starts to lighten.

1. Twilight wide shot (14–50 mm) over a landscape. Manual, RAW, tripod. f/4–5.6, ISO 200–800, shutter from 1/15 s in bright twilight to 2 s as the sky gets darker. Expose for the sky. The crescent will clip a little and Venus will be a sharp point. White balance 4000–5000 K.
2. Telephoto crescent (200–600 mm). For the lit limb: 1/125 s, f/8, ISO 200, which is a daylight exposure. Check the histogram, since a thin crescent is dimmer per unit area than a full Moon. For the earthshine and the planet: 1–4 s at f/5.6, ISO 800. Bracket in whole stops from 1/250 s to 4 s and blend later. HDR makes sense here, because your eye does see all three brightnesses at once.
3. Planet–planet pair. One exposure: f/4–5.6, 1–4 s, ISO 400–1600 depending on the twilight. Make it long enough to show the fainter planet clearly and short enough that it doesn't trail. The sky moves 15″ a second, so at 200 mm keep it under about 2 s, at 400 mm under 1 s.
4. Phone. Tap the Moon to set exposure and drag the slider down until the crescent stops glowing. Night mode works for the wide twilight scene but not for the Moon itself. Brace the phone, use the optical telephoto and not digital zoom, and shoot RAW if your phone has it.

Which focal length fills the frame

The table shows how much of a full-frame sensor's long side a given separation takes up. Between about 20% and 60% works best. The two objects are clearly a pair, and there's room for a horizon or the earthshine. Under 5% you get two dots. Over 85% the pair may not fit once you allow for the size of the objects themselves. On APS-C multiply by 1.5. On a phone's main camera (about 24 mm equivalent) use the 24 mm row.

Putting the pairing over a landmark

Evening conjunctions are in the west after sunset and get lower as you watch. Morning ones rise in the east before dawn. In the northern hemisphere they move towards the south-west or south-east in autumn and winter and towards the north-west or north-east in spring and summer, because the ecliptic tilts with the seasons. Get the exact azimuth for your date, then find a spot where that bearing lines up with something worth photographing (a headland, a tower, a ridge) at the altitude the pair will have in the middle of the window.

Arrive half an hour early. Focus on the planet at 100% magnification while it's the only thing visible, then shoot every couple of minutes through the window. The balance between sky, crescent and earthshine changes quickly, and the best frame often isn't the one you expected while you were shooting.

Lunar occultations: when the Moon covers a planet

Every month or two the Moon's path takes it directly across a bright star or planet, and from a band of Earth a few thousand miles wide the object vanishes behind one limb and reappears from the other up to an hour later. The Moon has no atmosphere, so a star disappears instantly, while a planet takes a few seconds as its disc is covered. Bright stars near the ecliptic (Antares, Regulus, Aldebaran, Spica, the Pleiades) are occulted in runs lasting a year or two. In late 2026 there is a series of Jupiter occultations, and on Oct 6 the Moon covers Jupiter for observers across the contiguous United States. Whether you can see it, and whether it happens in darkness, depends on where you are. A few hundred miles away the same event is only a close pass, so check the app for your own coordinates and don't rely on a world date.

The best moment to photograph is the disappearance or reappearance at the Moon's dark limb. You can't see that limb, so the planet seems to sit next to nothing and then it's gone. Shoot a burst every 10–15 s from two minutes before the predicted time, at 1/60–1/15 s and ISO 800. 4K video will record the exact moment. Events on the bright limb need 1/250 s or faster, because the limb is a hundred times brighter than Jupiter.

Common mistakes

• Waiting until it's dark. The pairing is best while the sky is still deep blue. Once it's fully dark the crescent overexposes and the pair is low.
• Exposing for the crescent alone. You lose the earthshine, the planet's colour and the horizon. The opposite mistake gives you a white blob where the Moon should be.
• Autofocus on a twilight sky. Focus manually on the planet at maximum magnification and leave it.
• Trusting a world date for an occultation. It's only an occultation if you're inside the ground track. Everywhere else it's a close pass, and the time depends on your coordinates.

FAQ

Sources and further reading

• Fred Espenak, Astropixels — Sky Event Almanac 2026 and Sky Event Almanac 2027 (every date, separation and occultation flag in the table).
• EarthSky — What is a conjunction in astronomy? (right-ascension definition; Venus inferior conjunction Oct 24, 2026 and superior conjunction Aug 11, 2027).
• EarthSky — Sky measurements: degrees, arcminutes and arcseconds (fist 10°, three fingers 5°, fingertip 1°, full Moon 0.5°).
• EarthSky — What is earthshine? (what it is and when it shows).
• Universe Today — Lunar occultations of Jupiter, Venus and more (visibility regions for the Sep 14 Venus, Oct 6 Jupiter and Nov 7 Venus occultations).
• EarthSky — Venus–Jupiter conjunction, June 2026 (the June 8–9, 2026 evening pairing).