Conjunction of the Moon and Mercury

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


The Moon and Mercury will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 1°53' to the north of Mercury. The Moon will be 2 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will become visible at around 19:54 (EST), 12° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 37 minutes after the Sun at 21:09.

The Moon will be at mag -8.7, and Mercury at mag -0.6, both in the constellation Aries.

The pair 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.

A graph of the angular separation between the Moon 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
The Moon 02h43m10s 19°59'N Aries -8.7 29'32"4
Mercury 02h43m10s 18°06'N Aries -0.6 6"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 19° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 15 Apr 2029

The sky on 15 April 2029
Sunrise
06:11
Sunset
19:32
Twilight ends
21:11
Twilight begins
04:32


Waxing Crescent

4%

2 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:50 13:59 21:09
Venus 06:31 13:14 19:57
Moon 06:44 14:04 21:33
Mars 16:53 23:08 05:23
Jupiter 19:02 00:41 06:19
Saturn 07:05 13:55 20:46
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

08 Feb 2029  –  Mercury at greatest elongation west
21 Apr 2029  –  Mercury at highest altitude in evening sky
21 Apr 2029  –  Mercury at greatest elongation east
08 Jun 2029  –  Mercury at greatest elongation west

Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Share