Conjunction of Venus and Mercury

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and Mercury will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 6°04' to the south of Mercury.

From South El Monte 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 -4.1 in the constellation Hydra, and Mercury at mag 2.4 in the neighbouring constellation of Leo.

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 09h39m50s 5°05'N Hydra -4.1 57"0
Mercury 09h39m50s 11°09'N Leo 2.4 9"5

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

The sky on 26 Apr 2026

The sky on 26 April 2026
Sunrise
06:05
Sunset
19:31
Twilight ends
21:02
Twilight begins
04:34


Waxing Gibbous

80%

9 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:26 11:43 17:59
Venus 07:30 14:35 21:39
Moon 15:06 21:33 03:50
Mars 05:07 11:21 17:35
Jupiter 10:41 17:50 00:58
Saturn 05:00 11:07 17:13
All times shown in PDT.

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

13 Jun 1991  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
28 Oct 1991  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
01 Nov 1991  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
19 Jan 1993  –  Venus at greatest elongation east

Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Share