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

Conjunction of Venus and Mercury

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed

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The sky at

Venus and Mercury will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 4°10' to the north of Mercury.

From Cambridge however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be 1° below the horizon at dusk.

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Venus will be at mag -3.9, and Mercury at mag 1.2, both in the constellation Virgo.

The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Venus and Mercury 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 14h02m10s 11°50'S Virgo -3.9 10"2
Mercury 14h02m10s 16°00'S Virgo 1.2 9"2

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 15° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 10 Oct 2027

The sky on 10 October 2027
Sunrise
06:48
Sunset
18:10
Twilight ends
19:44
Twilight begins
05:14

10-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

81%

10 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:27 13:30 18:32
Venus 08:11 13:30 18:49
Moon 15:54 21:16 02:47
Mars 10:14 15:01 19:47
Jupiter 04:11 10:37 17:04
Saturn 18:36 01:05 07:34
All times shown in EDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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

03 Jan 2027  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
21 Mar 2028  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
24 Mar 2028  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
11 Aug 2028  –  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.

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Cambridge

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42.38°N
71.11°W
EDT

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