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 a mere 6.0 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Venus, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 3 days old.

From Fairfield however, the pair will be visible from soon after it rises, at 08:12, until soon before it sets at 22:06. Always take extreme caution when trying to make daytime observations of the Moon while the Sun is above the horizon.

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 -10.1; and Venus will be at mag -4.0. Both objects will lie in the constellation Aries.

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

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 02h24m40s +14°48' Aries -10.1 31'33"2
Venus 02h24m30s +14°53' Aries -4.0 13"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 35° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 24 Mar 2023

The sky on 24 March 2023
Sunrise
06:48
Sunset
19:08
Twilight ends
20:42
Twilight begins
05:15

3-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

12%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:08 13:25 19:41
Venus 08:13 15:10 22:07
Moon 08:19 15:28 22:50
Mars 10:58 18:41 02:23
Jupiter 07:26 13:49 20:12
Saturn 05:42 11:02 16:22
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.

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20 Oct 2023  –  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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Fairfield

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41.14°N
73.26°W
EDT

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