Conjunction of Venus and Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and Jupiter will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 16' to the north of Jupiter.

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

From Fairfield , 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 05:24 (EST) – 1 hour and 12 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 8° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:18.

Venus will be at mag -3.9, and Jupiter at mag -1.7, both in the constellation Virgo.

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 Jupiter 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 14h20m10s 12°38'S Virgo -3.9 10"1
Jupiter 14h20m10s 12°55'S Virgo -1.7 30"1

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 13° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.

The sky on 13 Nov 2017

The sky on 13 November 2017
Sunrise
06:36
Sunset
16:35
Twilight ends
18:10
Twilight begins
05:01


Waning Crescent

20%

25 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:26 12:56 17:26
Venus 05:26 10:43 16:00
Moon 01:35 08:04 14:25
Mars 03:25 09:13 15:01
Jupiter 05:25 10:41 15:58
Saturn 09:22 14:01 18:40
All times shown in EST.

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

09 Jun 2017  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
08 Mar 2018  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
08 May 2018  –  Jupiter at opposition
10 Jul 2018  –  Jupiter 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.

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