Conjunction of Venus and Mars

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and Mars will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 26' to the north of Mars.

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

From Cambridge , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 15° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 20:49 (EST), 15° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 34 minutes after the Sun at 22:28.

Venus will be at mag -4.0, and Mars at mag 1.7, 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 to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Venus and Mars 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 05h25m30s 24°36'N Taurus -4.0 12"2
Mars 05h25m30s 24°10'N Taurus 1.7 3"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 30° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 12 May 2034

The sky on 12 May 2034
Sunrise
05:23
Sunset
19:54
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:27


Waning Crescent

34%

24 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:18 14:01 21:43
Venus 07:06 14:48 22:31
Moon 02:09 07:43 13:24
Mars 07:07 14:48 22:28
Jupiter 03:34 09:39 15:44
Saturn 09:02 16:34 00:05
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.

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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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