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°44' to the south of Venus. The Moon will be 28 days old.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 7° above the horizon at dawn.

The Moon will be at mag -8.9 in the constellation Cetus, and Venus at mag -4.2 in the neighbouring constellation of Aries.

The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.

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 02h08m20s 8°48'N Cetus -8.9 33'05"1
Venus 02h08m20s 15°32'N Aries -4.2 54"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 19° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 11 Jul 2026

The sky on 11 July 2026
Sunrise
05:46
Sunset
20:05
Twilight ends
21:47
Twilight begins
04:04


Waning Crescent

5%

27 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:10 13:01 19:52
Venus 09:14 15:50 22:26
Moon 02:35 10:08 17:45
Mars 02:56 10:02 17:07
Jupiter 06:50 13:51 20:51
Saturn 00:18 06:30 12:42
All times shown in PDT.

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 DE440 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

29 Feb 2132  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
12 Jul 2132  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
13 Aug 2132  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
04 Jul 2133  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky

Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Share