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 5°20' to the north of Venus. The Moon will be 3 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 18:12 (EDT), 26° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 44 minutes after the Sun at 20:39.

The Moon will be at mag -10.1, and Venus at mag -4.0, both in the constellation Aries.

The pair 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.

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 01h52m30s 16°55'N Aries -10.1 32'01"0
Venus 01h52m30s 11°35'N Aries -4.0 12"5

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

The sky on 27 Jul 2024

The sky on 27 July 2024
Sunrise
05:29
Sunset
20:08
Twilight ends
22:07
Twilight begins
03:30


Waning Crescent

48%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:52 14:29 21:06
Venus 06:43 13:49 20:55
Moon 23:04 05:53 12:56
Mars 01:08 08:31 15:54
Jupiter 01:40 09:09 16:38
Saturn 22:04 03:43 09:22
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

30 Mar 1990  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
11 May 1991  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
14 Jun 1991  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
27 Oct 1991  –  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