Conjunction of Venus and Mars

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and Mars will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 32' to the south of Mars.

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 16° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 18:17 (PDT), 16° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 59 minutes after the Sun at 19:39.

Venus will be at mag -3.9, and Mars at mag 1.2, both in the constellation Pisces.

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 Venus and Mars 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 23h44m30s 2°57'S Pisces -3.9 11"2
Mars 23h44m30s 2°25'S Pisces 1.2 4"1

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 25° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 24 Jun 2026

The sky on 24 June 2026
Sunrise
05:39
Sunset
20:06
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:54


Waxing Gibbous

79%

10 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:26 14:26 21:27
Venus 08:46 15:42 22:39
Moon 15:51 21:04 02:11
Mars 03:21 10:18 17:15
Jupiter 07:39 14:42 21:45
Saturn 01:23 07:34 13:45
All times shown in PDT.

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

11 May 1982  –  Mars ends retrograde motion
05 Apr 1984  –  Mars enters retrograde motion
11 May 1984  –  Mars at opposition
19 May 1984  –  Mars at perigee

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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