The planets Venus and Mercury will make a close approach, passing within a mere 2.1 arcminutes of each other.
From South El Monte , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 10° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 20:36 (PDT), 10° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 25 minutes after the Sun at 21:35.
Venus will be at mag -3.9; and Mercury will be at mag -0.3. Both objects will lie in the constellation Cancer.
They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also 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 Mercury 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 | 08h27m30s | 20°43'N | Cancer | -3.9 | 10"7 |
| Mercury | 08h27m20s | 20°41'N | Cancer | -0.3 | 6"1 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 21° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.
The sky on 17 May 2026
| The sky on 17 May 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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4% 1 day old |
All times shown in PDT.
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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.
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| 15 Nov 1965 | – Venus at greatest elongation east |
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| 06 Apr 1966 | – 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.