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 countries and territories including Antarctica, Argentina, Chile and southern Peru amongst others. 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 Fairfield.

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)
Antarctica 11:51–13:37
Argentina 10:52–12:55
Chile 10:45–12:53
Peru 10:27–11:21
Uruguay 11:28–12:18
Bolivia 10:51–11:38
Falkland Islands 11:39–12:58
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands 12:16–13:17
Brazil 11:36–11:55

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 12h45m20s 4°01'S Virgo -4.6 0'33"

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
05 Jun 2089 04 Mar 2098 Occultations of Venus 14 Jan 2100 14 Jan 2100
17 Nov 2098 17 Nov 2098 Occultations 03 Dec 2098 17 Dec 2098

The sky on 23 Nov 2024

The sky on 23 November 2024
Sunrise
06:48
Sunset
16:27
Twilight ends
18:04
Twilight begins
05:11


Waning Crescent

42%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:37 13:04 17:30
Venus 10:14 14:41 19:08
Moon 23:20 06:15 12:58
Mars 20:49 04:12 11:35
Jupiter 17:22 00:49 08:16
Saturn 13:05 18:37 00:09
All times shown in EST.

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

24 Jul 2098  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
25 Nov 2098  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
12 Dec 2098  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
01 Mar 2100  –  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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