Venus and Mercury will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 19' to the south of Mercury.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From South El Monte , the pair will become visible at around 20:24 (PDT), 12° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 33 minutes after the Sun at 21:34.
Venus will be at mag -4.2, and Mercury at mag -0.5, both in the constellation Gemini.
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 Venus and Mercury 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 |
Venus | 06h07m00s | 25°16'N | Gemini | -4.2 | 52"7 |
Mercury | 06h07m00s | 25°36'N | Gemini | -0.5 | 6"3 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 20° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.
The sky on 16 Jul 2025
The sky on 16 July 2025 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
57% 21 days old |
All times shown in PDT.
|
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
04 Apr 1980 | – Venus at greatest elongation east |
25 Aug 1980 | – Venus at greatest elongation west |
06 Sep 1980 | – Venus at highest altitude in morning sky |
10 Nov 1981 | – 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.