Lunar occultation of Venus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Lunar Occultations feed


Objects: Venus

The Moon will pass in front of Venus, creating a lunar occultation visible from Africa and Asia. Although the occultation will only be visible across part of the world – because the Moon is so close to the Earth that its position in the sky varies by as much as two degrees across the world – a close conjunction between the pair will be more widely visible.

Unfortunately the occultation will not be visible from Cambridge.

The map below shows the visibility of the occultation across the world. Separate contours show where the disappearance of Venus is visible (shown in red), and where its reappearance is visible (shown in blue). Solid contours show where each event is likely to be visible through binoculars at a reasonable altitude in the sky. Dotted contours indicate where each event occurs above the horizon, but may not be visible due to the sky being too bright or the Moon being very close to the horizon.

Outside the contours, the Moon will not pass in front of Venus at any time, or is below the horizon at the time of the occultation. However, a close conjunction between the pair will be visible across much of the world.

The map can be downloaded in PNG , PDF or SVG format. A KMZ file , is also available, which can be opened in Google Earth to provide a higher resolution map.

The animation below shows the path of the occultation across the Earth's globe. The red circle shows where the Moon appears in front of Venus.

[Unable to display this video because your browser does not support HTML5]
You can download this video in MP4 or OGG format.

A complete list of the countries and territories where the occultation will be visible is as follows:

Country Time span
(UTC)
Sudan 09:12–11:32
Democratic Republic of the Congo 08:24–11:14
Saudi Arabia 10:10–11:46
Iran 10:29–11:46
Chad 08:40–11:01
Ethiopia 09:42–11:37
Niger 08:04–10:22
Mali 07:29–09:32
Nigeria 07:55–10:30
Angola 08:22–10:31
Mauritania 07:28–09:02
Egypt 09:52–11:21
Somalia 10:10–11:40
Central African Republic 08:33–11:10
Tanzania 09:34–11:08
Kenya 09:45–11:25
Cameroon 08:11–10:38
Yemen 10:09–11:45
Iraq 10:27–11:30
Oman 10:27–11:46
Republic of the Congo 08:18–10:47
Ivory Coast 07:28–09:25
Burkina Faso 07:39–09:38
Gabon 08:09–10:31
Pakistan 10:35–11:46
Guinea 07:21–09:07
Uganda 09:30–11:19
Ghana 07:39–09:40
Libya 09:40–10:53
Senegal 07:21–08:54
Afghanistan 10:35–11:42
Eritrea 09:57–11:37
Benin 07:52–09:46
Liberia 07:23–09:10
Western Sahara 07:40–08:30
United Arab Emirates 10:27–11:45
Sierra Leone 07:21–09:00
Togo 07:49–09:43
Zambia 09:31–10:33
Turkmenistan 10:41–11:23
Jordan 10:27–11:03
Guinea-Bissau 07:20–08:50
Burundi 09:30–11:00
Equatorial Guinea 08:10–10:21
Rwanda 09:29–11:04
Djibouti 10:08–11:37
Kuwait 10:28–11:33
Qatar 10:27–11:41
Gambia 07:22–08:47
Cape Verde 07:15–08:31
Algeria 08:48–09:09
Israel 10:30–10:55
Sao Tome and Principe 08:02–10:06
Bahrain 10:27–11:39
Brazil 07:28–07:59
India 10:40–11:29
Saint Helena 07:35–08:35

Lunar occultations are only ever visible from a small fraction of the Earth's surface. Since the Moon is much closer to the Earth than other celestial objects, its exact position in the sky differs depending on your exact location on Earth due to its large parallax. The position of the Moon as seen from two points on opposite sides of the Earth varies by up to two degrees, or four times the diameter of the full moon.

This means that if the Moon is aligned to pass in front of a particular object for an observer on one side of the Earth, it will appear up to two degrees away from that object on the other side of the Earth.

The position of Venus at the moment of the occultation will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 19h59m10s 20°45'S Sagittarius -3.9 0'11"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occultations

« Previous Next »
Visible from the Contiguous United States Worldwide Worldwide Visible from the Contiguous United States
16 Aug 2053 28 Jun 2055 Occultations of Venus 13 Jul 2056 18 Oct 2063
08 Apr 2055 15 Jan 2056 Occultations 12 Mar 2056 31 Oct 2056

The sky on 4 Jul 2024

The sky on 4 July 2024
Sunrise
05:10
Sunset
20:24
Twilight ends
22:36
Twilight begins
02:57


Waning Crescent

1%

28 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:49 14:15 21:40
Venus 05:49 13:23 20:57
Moon 03:20 11:36 19:55
Mars 01:50 08:56 16:02
Jupiter 02:54 10:20 17:46
Saturn 23:35 05:15 10:56
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

14 Oct 2055  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
31 Dec 2056  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
26 Jan 2057  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
22 May 2057  –  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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