The Moon and Venus will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 5°24' to the south of Venus. The Moon will be 1 days old.
From Ashburn, the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 18° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 20:05 (EST) as the dusk sky fades, 18° above your western horizon. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 1 minute after the Sun at 21:47.
The Moon will be at mag -9.2, and Venus at mag -3.9, both in the constellation 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 | 03h15m20s | +12°56' | Aries | -9.2 | 32'06"2 |
| Venus | 03h15m20s | +18°20' | Aries | -3.9 | 11"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 22° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.
| The sky on 17 April 2018 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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3% 1 day old |
All times shown in EDT.
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Source
The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE405 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
| 05 Aug 2017 | – Venus reaches highest point in morning sky |
| 09 Jun 2018 | – Venus reaches highest point in evening sky |
| 17 Aug 2018 | – Venus at greatest elongation east |
| 14 Dec 2018 | – Venus reaches highest point 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.