The Moon, Venus and Neptune will make a close approach, passing within 5°49' of each other. The Moon will be 5 days old.
From Fairfield , the trio will become visible at around 17:09 (EDT), 15° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 22 minutes after the Sun at 19:13.
The Moon will be at mag -10.6 in Sagittarius; Venus will be at mag -4.3 in Ophiuchus; and Neptune will be at mag 8.0 in Ophiuchus.
They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.
At around the same time, the trio will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Venus around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the trio at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 17h43m40s | 20°53'S | Sagittarius | -10.6 | 29'28"2 |
| Venus | 17h40m40s | 26°41'S | Ophiuchus | -4.3 | 22"4 |
| Neptune | 17h30m30s | 21°59'S | Ophiuchus | 8.0 | 2"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 47° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.
The sky on 9 May 2024
| The sky on 9 May 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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7% 1 day old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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.
Related news
| 09 Sep 1980 | – Venus at highest altitude in morning sky |
| 10 Nov 1981 | – Venus at greatest elongation east |
| 18 Dec 1981 | – Venus at highest altitude in evening sky |
| 01 Apr 1982 | – 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.