Conjunction of Venus and Mars

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and Mars will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 34' to the south of Mars.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From South El Monte , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 13° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 18:17 (PDT), 13° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 47 minutes after the Sun at 19:26.

Venus will be at mag -3.9, and Mars at mag 1.2, both in the constellation Aquarius.

The pair will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Venus and Mars around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 23h24m30s 5°16'S Aquarius -3.9 10"8
Mars 23h24m30s 4°41'S Aquarius 1.2 4"1

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 22° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 12 Sep 2025

The sky on 12 September 2025
Sunrise
06:30
Sunset
19:02
Twilight ends
20:27
Twilight begins
05:05


Waning Gibbous

64%

20 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:28 12:47 19:05
Venus 04:15 11:00 17:44
Moon 21:29 04:44 12:09
Mars 09:11 14:49 20:28
Jupiter 01:42 08:49 15:55
Saturn 19:30 01:25 07:20
All times shown in PDT.

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

03 May 1950  –  Mars ends retrograde motion
25 Mar 1952  –  Mars enters retrograde motion
30 Apr 1952  –  Mars at opposition
08 May 1952  –  Mars at perigee

Image credit

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

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