An illustration of the night sky on June 5, 2024 showing the moon in close proximity to the sun during the new moon.The new moon of July 2024 occurs today as Earth reaches its farthest point from the sun, known as aphelion., according to the U.S. Naval Observatory, and two days later the young moon will make a close pass to Mercury in the evening sky. than at any other period in its yearly orbit.
Observing the conjunction gets easier as one moves closer to the equator. From lower latitudes the ecliptic, or plane of the Earth's orbit projected on the sky, makes a steeper angle with the horizon. That means planets, which all move within a few degrees of the ecliptic, tend to reach higher altitudes. .
In the Western Hemisphere the conjunction itself happens in the afternoon, in daylight, but as one moves east the moment of conjunction moves into evening. From Madrid, Spain, the observing challenges are similar to those in New York but the conjunction occurs at 8:33 p.m. local time. This means that by about 4:30 a.m. local time in mid-northern latitudes the three naked-eye planets further from the sun than Earth will make a kind of line across the sky from the eastern horizon to the right, starting with Jupiter and ending with Saturn.