Venus and Mercury will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 1°23' to the south of Mercury.
From Los Angeles , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 8° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 18:07 (PDT), 8° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 59 minutes after the Sun at 18:51.
Venus will be at mag -3.9, and Mercury at mag -1.1, both in the constellation Pisces.
The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will 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 | 23h55m30s | 1°53'S | Pisces | -3.9 | 10"0 |
| Mercury | 23h55m30s | 0°29'S | Pisces | -1.1 | 5"7 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 13° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.
The sky on 5 Mar 2018
| The sky on 5 March 2018 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
79% 18 days old |
All times shown in PST.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 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
| 26 Jul 2017 | – Venus at highest altitude in morning sky |
| 13 Jun 2018 | – Venus at highest altitude in evening sky |
| 17 Aug 2018 | – Venus at greatest elongation east |
| 15 Dec 2018 | – Venus at highest altitude in morning sky |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.