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

Close approach of the Moon and Venus

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon and Venus will make a close approach, passing within 6°27' of each other. The Moon will be 4 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will become visible at around 19:30 (EST), 39° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 23:15.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

The Moon will be at mag -10.5 in Taurus; and Venus will be at mag -4.4 in Aries.

They 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.

At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.

A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Venus around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
The Moon 03h31m40s 15°53'N Taurus -10.5 29'46"9
Venus 03h23m10s 22°01'N Aries -4.4 24"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 46° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 28 Mar 2020

The sky on 28 March 2020
Sunrise
06:40
Sunset
19:13
Twilight ends
20:48
Twilight begins
05:06

4-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

19%

4 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:48 11:19 16:49
Venus 08:23 15:49 23:15
Moon 09:02 16:07 23:20
Mars 03:46 08:29 13:12
Jupiter 03:26 08:09 12:53
Saturn 03:48 08:37 13:25
All times shown in EDT.

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 Mar 2020  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
13 Aug 2020  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
02 Sep 2020  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
29 Oct 2021  –  Venus at greatest elongation east

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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Fairfield

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Longitude:
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41.14°N
73.26°W
EST

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