The Moon, Venus and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 4°33' of each other. The Moon will be 3 days old.
From Columbus , the trio will become visible at around 17:37 (EST), 16° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 30 minutes after the Sun at 19:50.
The Moon will be at mag -10.7; Venus will be at mag -4.5; and Mars will be at mag 1.1. The trio will lie in the constellation Sagittarius.
They 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.
At around the same time, the trio will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Venus around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the trio at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
The Moon | 18h11m40s | 22°46'S | Sagittarius | -10.7 | 32'27"1 |
Venus | 18h14m00s | 27°17'S | Sagittarius | -4.5 | 29"3 |
Mars | 18h15m50s | 24°43'S | Sagittarius | 1.1 | 4"9 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 45° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.
The sky on 9 Nov 2029
The sky on 9 November 2029 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
19% 3 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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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.
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18 Mar 2030 | – Venus 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.