The Moon and Venus will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 5°42' to the south of Venus. The Moon will be 27 days old.
From Columbus , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 05:13 (EST) – 2 hours and 38 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 20° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 07:33.
The Moon will be at mag -10.1 in the constellation Scorpius, and Venus at mag -4.0 in the neighbouring constellation of Ophiuchus.
The pair 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.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Venus 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 |
| The Moon | 16h42m10s | 26°14'S | Scorpius | -10.1 | 31'39"2 |
| Venus | 16h42m10s | 20°32'S | Ophiuchus | -4.0 | 13"5 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 35° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.
The sky on 8 Jan 2024
| The sky on 8 January 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
6% 27 days old |
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
| 23 Oct 2023 | – Venus at greatest elongation west |
| 10 Jan 2025 | – Venus at greatest elongation east |
| 02 Feb 2025 | – Venus at highest altitude in evening sky |
| 31 May 2025 | – Venus at greatest elongation west |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.