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 18' to the north 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 Fairfield , the pair will become visible at around 16:59 (EDT), 29° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 29 minutes after the Sun at 20:09.

The Moon will be at mag -10.4, and Venus at mag -4.1, both in the constellation Aquarius.

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 22h26m50s 10°56'S Aquarius -10.4 30'00"5
Venus 22h26m50s 11°14'S Aquarius -4.1 16"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 41° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 23 Jul 2024

The sky on 23 July 2024
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
20:17
Twilight ends
22:14
Twilight begins
03:40


Waning Gibbous

93%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:00 14:43 21:25
Venus 06:45 13:54 21:03
Moon 21:35 02:43 08:00
Mars 01:27 08:44 16:01
Jupiter 02:06 09:30 16:54
Saturn 22:27 04:08 09:48
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.

Related news

12 Dec 2098  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
01 Mar 2100  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
09 Mar 2100  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
21 Jul 2100  –  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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