Conjunction of Venus and Mercury

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and Mercury will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 25' to the north of Mercury.

From Fairfield however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 1° above the horizon at dusk.

Venus will be at mag -3.9, and Mercury at mag 2.3, both in the constellation Taurus.

The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible 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 05h35m30s 24°06'N Taurus -3.9 10"2
Mercury 05h35m30s 23°41'N Taurus 2.3 10"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 16° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 29 May 2021

The sky on 29 May 2021
Sunrise
05:21
Sunset
20:17
Twilight ends
22:19
Twilight begins
03:19


Waning Gibbous

85%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:25 13:58 21:32
Venus 06:25 14:00 21:36
Moon 23:17 03:42 08:09
Mars 08:27 15:57 23:28
Jupiter 01:17 06:38 11:59
Saturn 00:28 05:27 10:27
All times shown in EDT.

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

02 Sep 2020  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
29 Oct 2021  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
06 Dec 2021  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
16 Feb 2022  –  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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