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

Lunar occultation of Venus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Lunar Occultations feed

Objects: Venus
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The Moon will pass in front of Venus, creating a lunar occultation visible from countries and territories including the western Contiguous United States, Alaska, western Canada and western Mexico amongst others.

The occultation will be visible from San Diego. It will begin with the disappearance of Venus behind the Moon at 13:23 PST, though In daylight. Its reappearance will be visible at 14:34 PST, though In daylight and at a low altitude of 6.6 degrees.

Extreme caution is necessary when pointing binoculars or telescopes at the sky when the Sun is above the horizon, as even a momentary glance at the Sun through such an instrument can cause permanent blindness.

The map below shows the visibility of the occultation across the world. Separate contours show where the disappearance of Venus is visible (shown in red), and where its reappearance is visible (shown in blue). Solid contours show where each event is likely to be visible through binoculars at a reasonable altitude in the sky. Dotted contours indicate where each event occurs above the horizon, but may not be visible due to the sky being too bright or the Moon being very close to the horizon.

Map showing where the occultation is visible

Outside of the contours, the Moon does not pass in front of Venus at any time, or is below the horizon at the time of the occultation. However, a close conjunction between the pair may be visible.

The map can be downloaded in PNG , PDF or SVG format. A KMZ file , is also available, which can be opened in Google Earth to provide a higher resolution map.

A complete list of the countries and territories where the occultation will be visible is as follows:

Country Time span
(UTC)
The Contiguous United States 06:18–06:08
Alaska 03:53–06:04
Canada 18:42–06:48
Mexico 05:34–05:17
Hawaii 21:43–05:48
Midway Atoll 21:13–05:44
Clipperton Island 05:27–12:07
Midway Islands 21:18–15:59
Russia 08:31–21:31

Lunar occultations are only ever visible from a small fraction of the Earth's surface. Since the Moon is much closer to the Earth than other celestial objects, its exact position in the sky differs depending on your exact location on Earth due to its large parallax. The position of the Moon as seen from two points on opposite sides of the Earth varies by up to two degrees, or four times the diameter of the full moon.

This means that if the Moon is aligned to pass in front of a particular object for an observer on one side of the Earth, it will appear up to two degrees away from that object on the other side of the Earth.

At the time of the occultation, the Moon will be 25 days past new moon and will be 5% illuminated. Venus will disappear behind the illuminated side of the Moon and reappear from behind the unilluminated side of the Moon.

The position of Venus at the moment of the occultation will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 15h36m50s 17°59'S Libra -4.0 0'11"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occultations

« Previous Next »
Visible from the Contiguous United States Worldwide Worldwide Visible from the Contiguous United States
07 Dec 2015 19 Jun 2020 Occultations of Venus 12 May 2021 07 Apr 2024
22 Sep 2020 19 Oct 2020 Occultations 09 Jan 2021 25 Jun 2021

The sky on 12 Dec 2020

The sky on 12 December 2020
Sunrise
06:39
Sunset
16:43
Twilight ends
18:11
Twilight begins
05:11

27-day old moon
Waning Crescent

2%

27 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:25 11:23 16:21
Venus 04:42 09:57 15:12
Moon 04:18 09:50 15:16
Mars 13:08 19:32 01:55
Jupiter 09:16 14:22 19:28
Saturn 09:19 14:26 19:33
All times shown in PST.

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

29 Aug 2020  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
29 Oct 2021  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
03 Dec 2021  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
19 Feb 2022  –  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.

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