Conjunction of the Moon and Venus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


The Moon and Venus will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 34' to the south of Venus. The Moon will be 4 days old.

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

From Jacksonville , the pair will become visible at around 18:12 (EDT), 38° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 34 minutes after the Sun at 21:30.

The Moon will be at mag -10.8, and Venus at mag -4.4, 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 the Moon and Venus 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
The Moon 23h13m20s 5°57'S Aquarius -10.8 32'35"4
Venus 23h13m20s 5°23'S Aquarius -4.4 22"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 46° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 17 Jul 2024

The sky on 17 July 2024
Sunrise
06:33
Sunset
20:28
Twilight ends
22:02
Twilight begins
04:59


Waxing Gibbous

84%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:41 15:18 21:55
Venus 07:29 14:21 21:12
Moon 17:20 22:24 03:26
Mars 02:35 09:24 16:13
Jupiter 03:26 10:22 17:18
Saturn 23:18 05:06 10:53
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

11 Nov 1959  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
28 Jan 1961  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
08 Feb 1961  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
19 Jun 1961  –  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.

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