The Moon and Venus will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 3°44' to the south of Venus. The Moon will be 1 days old.
From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 19:11 (EDT), 10° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 20 minutes after the Sun at 20:14.
The Moon will be at mag -8.3 in the constellation Cetus, and Venus at mag -3.9 in the neighbouring constellation of 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 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 | 00h54m30s | 1°03'N | Cetus | -8.3 | 31'05"8 |
| Venus | 00h54m30s | 4°47'N | Pisces | -3.9 | 10"3 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 15° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.
The sky on 18 Mar 2018
| The sky on 18 March 2018 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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3% 1 day old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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
| 02 Aug 2017 | – Venus at highest altitude in morning sky |
| 06 Jun 2018 | – Venus at highest altitude in evening sky |
| 17 Aug 2018 | – Venus at greatest elongation east |
| 13 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.