The Moon and Venus will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 6°15' to the north of Venus. The Moon will be 3 days old.
From Washington, the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 17° above the horizon. They will become visible around 20:42 (MDT) as the dusk sky fades, 17° above your western horizon. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 52 minutes after the Sun at 22:16.
The Moon will be at mag -10.6, and Venus at mag -4.3, both in the constellation Virgo.
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 | 12h25m00s | +02°13' | Virgo | -10.6 | 32'14"5 |
| Venus | 12h25m00s | -04°01' | Virgo | -4.3 | 23"5 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 43° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.
| The sky on 14 August 2018 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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13% 3 days old |
All times shown in MDT.
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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
| 17 Jun 2018 | – Venus reaches highest point in evening sky |
| 17 Aug 2018 | – Venus at greatest elongation east |
| 11 Dec 2018 | – Venus reaches highest point in morning sky |
| 05 Jan 2019 | – Venus at greatest elongation west |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.