Conjunction of Venus and Mercury

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and Mercury will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 21' to the south of Mercury.

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 8° above the horizon. They will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 05:31 (PDT) – 1 hour and 0 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 8° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:15.

Venus will be at mag -3.9, and Mercury at mag -1.2, both in the constellation Leo.

The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible to the naked eye or 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 10h30m00s 10°47'N Leo -3.9 10"0
Mercury 10h30m00s 11°08'N Leo -1.2 5"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 Leo at this time of year.

The sky on 13 Jul 2025

The sky on 13 July 2025
Sunrise
05:48
Sunset
20:04
Twilight ends
21:46
Twilight begins
04:06


Waning Gibbous

89%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:46 14:29 21:12
Venus 03:00 09:58 16:57
Moon 21:50 03:06 08:30
Mars 10:08 16:29 22:50
Jupiter 04:46 11:56 19:06
Saturn 23:36 05:35 11:33
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

27 Mar 1998  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
15 May 1999  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
11 Jun 1999  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
27 Oct 1999  –  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.

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