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 3°44' to the south of Mercury.

From San Diego however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 0° above the horizon at dawn.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

Venus will be at mag -3.9, and Mercury at mag 1.7, both in the constellation Sagittarius.

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 19h19m10s 22°29'S Sagittarius -3.9 10"2
Mercury 19h19m10s 18°45'S Sagittarius 1.7 9"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 14° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 22 Jan 2029

The sky on 22 January 2029
Sunrise
06:46
Sunset
17:11
Twilight ends
18:37
Twilight begins
05:20

8-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

56%

8 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:46 10:58 16:11
Venus 05:56 10:57 15:58
Moon 10:46 17:45 00:49
Mars 22:25 04:23 10:22
Jupiter 23:40 05:20 10:59
Saturn 11:18 17:49 00:19
All times shown in PST.

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

28 Aug 2028  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
26 Oct 2029  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
30 Nov 2029  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
16 Feb 2030  –  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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San Diego

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32.72°N
117.16°W
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