The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Lunar occultation of Venus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Lunar Occultations feed

Objects: Venus

The Moon will pass in front of Venus, creating a lunar occultation visible from Asia and Eastern Africa. Although the occultation will only be visible across part of the world – because the Moon is so close to the Earth that its position in the sky varies by as much as two degrees across the world – a close conjunction between the pair will be more widely visible.

Unfortunately the occultation will not be visible from Ashburn.

The map below shows the visibility of the occultation across the world. Separate contours show where the disappearance of Venus is visible (shown in red), and where its reappearance is visible (shown in blue). Solid contours show where each event is likely to be visible through binoculars at a reasonable altitude in the sky. Dotted contours indicate where each event occurs above the horizon, but may not be visible due to the sky being too bright or the Moon being very close to the horizon.

Map showing where the occultation is visible

Outside the contours, the Moon will not pass in front of Venus at any time, or is below the horizon at the time of the occultation. However, a close conjunction between the pair will be visible across much of the world.

The map can be downloaded in PNG , PDF or SVG format. A KMZ file , is also available, which can be opened in Google Earth to provide a higher resolution map.

The animation below shows the path of the occultation across the Earth's globe. The red circle shows where the Moon appears in front of Venus.

You can download this video in MP4 or OGG format.

A complete list of the countries and territories where the occultation will be visible is as follows:

Country Time span
(UTC)
Indonesia 02:02–04:59
China 03:23–05:01
Thailand 02:29–04:35
Philippines 03:11–05:13
Vietnam 02:44–04:45
Malaysia 02:20–04:52
Madagascar 00:45–01:35
Laos 03:04–04:41
Cambodia 02:48–04:40
Myanmar 02:41–04:12
Taiwan 03:50–05:10
Japan 04:00–05:24
India 02:29–03:47
Brunei 02:57–04:43
Mauritius 00:54–01:42
Federated States of Micronesia 04:20–05:26
Reunion 00:53–01:40
Hong Kong 03:43–04:55
Guam 04:14–05:29
Northern Mariana Islands 04:15–05:30
Singapore 02:21–04:12
French Southern Territories 00:48–01:40
Palau 03:59–05:14
Paracel Islands 03:22–04:54
Christmas Island 02:06–03:37
Cocos Islands 01:36–03:19
Macao 03:43–04:52
Spratly Islands 03:12–04:55

Lunar occultations are only ever visible from a small fraction of the Earth's surface. Since the Moon is much closer to the Earth than other celestial objects, its exact position in the sky differs depending on your exact location on Earth due to its large parallax. The position of the Moon as seen from two points on opposite sides of the Earth varies by up to two degrees, or four times the diameter of the full moon.

This means that if the Moon is aligned to pass in front of a particular object for an observer on one side of the Earth, it will appear up to two degrees away from that object on the other side of the Earth.

The position of Venus at the moment of the occultation will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 01h46m40s 8°52'N Pisces -4.0 0'14"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occultations

« Previous Next »
Visible from the Contiguous United States Worldwide Worldwide Visible from the Contiguous United States
12 Dec 2020 08 Nov 2021 Occultations of Venus 24 Mar 2023 07 Apr 2024
19 Apr 2022 19 May 2022 Occultations 13 Jun 2022 13 Jun 2022

The sky on 26 May 2022

The sky on 26 May 2022
Sunrise
05:46
Sunset
20:25
Twilight ends
22:18
Twilight begins
03:53

26-day old moon
Waning Crescent

7%

26 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:36 12:37 19:38
Venus 04:06 10:37 17:09
Moon 03:50 10:15 16:51
Mars 03:00 08:59 14:58
Jupiter 03:01 09:04 15:07
Saturn 01:28 06:44 11:59
All times shown in EDT.

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

20 Mar 2022  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
08 May 2023  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
04 Jun 2023  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
20 Oct 2023  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky

Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Share

Ashburn

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

Color scheme