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 6" to the north of Venus. The Moon will be 2 days old.

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 8° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 19:04 (EDT), 8° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 12 minutes after the Sun at 19:58.

The Moon will be at mag -9.9, and Venus at mag -3.9, both in the constellation Virgo.

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 13h40m30s 10°24'S Virgo -9.9 30'42"2
Venus 13h40m30s 10°24'S Virgo -3.9 12"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 32° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 22 Jul 2024

The sky on 22 July 2024
Sunrise
05:24
Sunset
20:13
Twilight ends
22:15
Twilight begins
03:22


Waning Gibbous

94%

17 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:49 14:35 21:21
Venus 06:31 13:44 20:58
Moon 20:57 01:38 06:28
Mars 01:17 08:37 15:56
Jupiter 01:56 09:25 16:53
Saturn 22:24 04:03 09:43
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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19 Jan 2089  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
12 May 2089  –  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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