The planets Venus and Saturn will make a close approach, passing within 1°47' of each other.
From Cambridge , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 12° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 16:49 (EDT), 12° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 10 minutes after the Sun at 18:21.
Venus will be at mag -4.0; and Saturn will be at mag 0.5. Both objects will lie in the constellation Sagittarius.
They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.
At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between Venus and Saturn around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| Venus | 19h22m10s | 23°49'S | Sagittarius | -4.0 | 12"0 |
| Saturn | 19h21m20s | 22°02'S | Sagittarius | 0.5 | 15"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 30° from the Sun, which is in Ophiuchus at this time of year.
The sky on 11 Dec 2019
| The sky on 11 December 2019 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
99% 15 days old |
All times shown in EST.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Source
The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.
Related news
| 18 Sep 2019 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 10 May 2020 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 20 Jul 2020 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 29 Sep 2020 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.