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 14' to the south of Venus. The Moon will be 4 days old.

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

From Jacksonville , the pair will become visible at around 20:36 (EDT), 36° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 22 minutes after the Sun at 23:41.

The Moon will be at mag -10.5, and Venus at mag -4.3, both in the constellation Gemini.

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 07h30m50s 24°24'N Gemini -10.5 29'44"9
Venus 07h30m50s 24°38'N Gemini -4.3 22"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 45° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 22 Jul 2024

The sky on 22 July 2024
Sunrise
06:36
Sunset
20:26
Twilight ends
21:59
Twilight begins
05:03


Waning Gibbous

97%

17 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:47 15:17 21:47
Venus 07:39 14:26 21:14
Moon 21:06 02:22 07:44
Mars 02:28 09:19 16:10
Jupiter 03:10 10:07 17:03
Saturn 22:58 04:45 10:33
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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18 Oct 2039  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
19 Oct 2039  –  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.

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