Conjunction of Venus and Mercury

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and Mercury will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 41' to the south of Mercury.

From Fairfield however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 12° from it.

Venus will be at mag -3.9, and Mercury at mag 3.4, 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 through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Venus and Mercury 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 01h44m00s 9°19'N Pisces -3.9 9"9
Mercury 01h44m00s 10°00'N Pisces 3.4 11"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 12° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 13 May 2025

The sky on 13 May 2025
Sunrise
05:34
Sunset
20:02
Twilight ends
21:55
Twilight begins
03:41


Waning Gibbous

98%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:57 11:40 18:23
Venus 03:46 09:58 16:11
Moon 20:32 01:06 05:34
Mars 11:08 18:22 01:36
Jupiter 07:27 14:58 22:29
Saturn 03:30 09:25 15:19
All times shown in EDT.

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

04 Nov 1983  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
21 Jan 1985  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
09 Feb 1985  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
12 Jun 1985  –  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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