The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Conjunction of Venus and Neptune

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed

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The sky at

Venus and Neptune will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 4'30" to the south of Neptune.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From Ashburn , the pair will become visible at around 18:30 (EDT), 22° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 14 minutes after the Sun at 20:38.

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Venus will be at mag -4.1, and Neptune at mag 7.9, both in the constellation Aquarius.

The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Venus and Neptune 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 23h12m30s 6°16'S Aquarius -4.1 14"9
Neptune 23h12m30s 6°11'S Aquarius 7.9 2"2

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 39° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 27 Jan 2020

The sky on 27 January 2020
Sunrise
07:19
Sunset
17:24
Twilight ends
18:56
Twilight begins
05:46

3-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

10%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:03 13:09 18:15
Venus 09:13 14:55 20:38
Moon 09:09 14:35 20:08
Mars 04:00 08:44 13:28
Jupiter 05:54 10:38 15:22
Saturn 06:39 11:28 16:18
All times shown in EST.

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

27 Nov 2019  –  Neptune ends retrograde motion
22 Jun 2020  –  Neptune enters retrograde motion
11 Sep 2020  –  Neptune at opposition
28 Nov 2020  –  Neptune ends retrograde motion

Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

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Ashburn

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Longitude:
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39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

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