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°24' to the south of Venus. The Moon will be 1 days old.

From Jacksonville , the pair will become visible at around 20:10 (EST), 19° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 51 minutes after the Sun at 21:46.

The Moon will be at mag -9.2, and Venus at mag -3.9, 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 03h15m20s 12°55'N Aries -9.2 32'06"2
Venus 03h15m20s 18°20'N Aries -3.9 11"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 22° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 17 Apr 2018

The sky on 17 April 2018
Sunrise
06:55
Sunset
19:55
Twilight ends
21:19
Twilight begins
05:31


Waxing Crescent

6%

1 day old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:58 12:02 18:07
Venus 08:10 14:57 21:45
Moon 08:19 14:57 21:40
Mars 01:52 06:57 12:02
Jupiter 21:37 02:59 08:21
Saturn 01:15 06:23 11:30
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

20 Jul 2017  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
20 Jun 2018  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
17 Aug 2018  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
18 Dec 2018  –  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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