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 6'31" to the south of Venus. The Moon will be 3 days old.

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

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 19:17 (EST), 28° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 0 minutes after the Sun at 22:00.

The Moon will be at mag -10.1, and Venus at mag -4.0, both in the constellation Aries.

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 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 02h24m20s 14°47'N Aries -10.1 31'33"3
Venus 02h24m20s 14°53'N Aries -4.0 13"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 35° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 24 Mar 2023

The sky on 24 March 2023
Sunrise
06:39
Sunset
19:00
Twilight ends
20:35
Twilight begins
05:04


Waxing Crescent

12%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:59 13:16 19:33
Venus 08:02 15:01 22:01
Moon 08:13 15:19 22:39
Mars 10:45 18:32 02:20
Jupiter 07:17 13:41 20:05
Saturn 05:35 10:53 16:11
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 Mar 2022  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
08 May 2023  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
04 Jun 2023  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
20 Oct 2023  –  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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