VIDEO: Venus and Mars approach the Sun in December 2025

We are publishing a video showing the movements of the two closest planets to Earth, Venus and Mars, across the starry sky in December 2025. The two celestial bodies continue their approach to each other and will conjunct the Sun on January 7-8, reaching a minimum distance of less than 1 degree—an event whose next recurrence will not occur until the 23rd century (June 6, 2267). As of the morning of January 3, Venus, moving from the right, has already approached the Sun to within about 1 degree. Mars, moving from the left, is still approximately 2 degrees away.

Since the conjunction of the planets with the Sun occurs not in the night sky but in the daytime sky, the planets are obscured by the Sun's rays when observed from Earth, and the celestial bodies can only be seen from space. This video uses images obtained over the course of a month by the LASCO space telescope. The active December Sun, which was producing flares almost continuously during this period, is visible raging in the center of the frame, and both planets are moving toward each other against this backdrop. Venus—the brightest object in the sky after the Moon and the Sun—noticeably overexposes the image, creating bright streaks to the left and right of it. The numerous dots moving from left to right in the video are the starry sky (even fragments of the Milky Way are visible in places), which forms the backdrop for this spectacle.