Venus and Neptune will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 47" to the south of Neptune.
From Ashburn , the pair will become visible around 18:03 (EDT), 20° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 12 minutes after the Sun at 19:58.
Venus will be at mag -4.0, and Neptune at mag 8.0, 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 | 23h38m50s | -03°34' | Aquarius | -4.0 | 11"6 |
Neptune | 23h38m50s | -03°33' | Aquarius | 8.0 | 2"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 27° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.
The sky on 15 Feb 2023
The sky on 15 February 2023 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
24% 25 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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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.
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Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.