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 3°12' to the north of Venus. The Moon will be 3 days old.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From Fairfield , the pair will become visible at around 20:47 (EDT), 21° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 27 minutes after the Sun at 22:54.

The Moon will be at mag -9.9, and Venus at mag -4.0, both in the constellation Gemini.

The pair will be too widely separated to fit 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 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 07h45m40s 26°23'N Gemini -9.9 29'41"8
Venus 07h45m40s 23°10'N Gemini -4.0 13"1

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 34° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 28 Sep 2024

The sky on 28 September 2024
Sunrise
06:44
Sunset
18:39
Twilight ends
20:11
Twilight begins
05:12


Waning Crescent

9%

25 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:35 12:37 18:40
Venus 09:23 14:37 19:50
Moon 02:26 09:54 17:11
Mars 23:48 07:19 14:51
Jupiter 22:14 05:42 13:10
Saturn 17:50 23:24 04:58
All times shown in EDT.

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

05 Aug 1985  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
10 Jun 1986  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
26 Aug 1986  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
21 Dec 1986  –  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