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 48' to the north 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 Los Angeles , the pair will become visible at around 19:28 (PDT), 40° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 44 minutes after the Sun at 22:56.

The Moon will be at mag -10.7, and Venus at mag -4.5, both in the constellation Taurus.

The pair will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably 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 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 03h35m40s 24°18'N Taurus -10.7 32'30"2
Venus 03h35m40s 23°29'N Taurus -4.5 28"1

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

The sky on 26 Jun 2024

The sky on 26 June 2024
Sunrise
05:40
Sunset
20:08
Twilight ends
21:52
Twilight begins
03:55


Waning Gibbous

71%

20 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:42 13:55 21:08
Venus 06:08 13:20 20:33
Moon 23:26 04:57 10:36
Mars 02:29 09:13 15:57
Jupiter 03:50 10:52 17:55
Saturn 00:09 05:55 11:41
All times shown in PDT.

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

19 Mar 2044  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
06 Aug 2044  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
25 Aug 2044  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
22 Oct 2045  –  Venus at greatest elongation east

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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