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 23' to the north of Venus. The Moon will be 1 days old.

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 8° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 20:18 (PDT), 8° above your north-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 6 minutes after the Sun at 21:07.

The Moon will be at mag -8.2, and Venus at mag -3.9, both in the constellation Taurus.

The pair 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.

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 05h42m00s 24°29'N Taurus -8.2 33'22"1
Venus 05h42m00s 24°05'N Taurus -3.9 10"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 14° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 8 Jun 2025

The sky on 8 June 2025
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
20:01
Twilight ends
21:46
Twilight begins
03:53


Waxing Gibbous

94%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:21 13:39 20:56
Venus 03:16 09:46 16:16
Moon 18:08 23:07 04:01
Mars 10:49 17:32 00:15
Jupiter 06:28 13:39 20:50
Saturn 01:50 07:48 13:46
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 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

07 Sep 1972  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
13 Nov 1973  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
17 Dec 1973  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
06 Mar 1974  –  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