Conjunction of Venus and Mercury

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and Mercury will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 1°19' to the south of Mercury.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be 2° below the horizon at dawn.

Venus will be at mag -3.9 in the constellation Cetus, and Mercury at mag 2.1 in the neighbouring constellation of Pisces.

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

A graph of the angular separation between Venus and Mercury 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 00h35m30s 2°10'N Cetus -3.9 10"3
Mercury 00h35m30s 3°29'N Pisces 2.1 10"8

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 18° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 15 Jun 2026

The sky on 15 June 2026
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
20:04
Twilight ends
21:49
Twilight begins
03:52


Waxing Crescent

3%

1 day old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:27 14:37 21:47
Venus 08:30 15:35 22:40
Moon 05:58 13:37 21:13
Mars 03:36 10:27 17:19
Jupiter 08:06 15:10 22:14
Saturn 01:57 08:07 14:18
All times shown in PDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE440 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

13 Nov 1951  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
31 Jan 1953  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
13 Feb 1953  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
22 Jun 1953  –  Venus at greatest elongation west

Image credit

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

Share