The planets Venus and Saturn will make a close approach, passing within 2°59' of each other.
From Columbus , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 13° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 19:05 (EST), 13° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 4 minutes after the Sun at 20:36.
Venus will be at mag -4.0; and Saturn will be at mag 0.4. Both objects will lie in the constellation Ophiuchus.
They 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.
At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between Venus and Saturn around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| Venus | 16h48m50s | 24°04'S | Ophiuchus | -4.0 | 13"8 |
| Saturn | 16h51m00s | 21°07'S | Ophiuchus | 0.4 | 15"3 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 37° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.
The sky on 29 Oct 2016
| The sky on 29 October 2016 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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0% 28 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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.
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| 15 Jun 2017 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 25 Aug 2017 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.