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

Close approach of Venus and Jupiter

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The planets Venus and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within 1°43' of each other.

From Fairfield , the pair will become visible at around 19:32 (EST), 13° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 39 minutes after the Sun at 20:54.

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 -4.1; and Jupiter will be at mag -1.8. Both objects will lie in the constellation Virgo.

They 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.

At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.

A graph of the angular separation between Venus and Jupiter 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
Venus 13h36m00s 10°43'S Virgo -4.1 15"9
Jupiter 13h39m00s 9°09'S Virgo -1.8 31"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 41° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.

The sky on 7 Sep 2029

The sky on 7 September 2029
Sunrise
06:22
Sunset
19:15
Twilight ends
20:50
Twilight begins
04:46

28-day old moon
Waning Crescent

0%

28 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:48 13:38 19:27
Venus 09:56 15:21 20:46
Moon 05:27 12:02 18:25
Mars 11:53 16:49 21:44
Jupiter 09:53 15:23 20:54
Saturn 22:13 05:17 12:21
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.

Related news

13 Jun 2029  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
13 Mar 2030  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
13 May 2030  –  Jupiter at opposition
14 Jul 2030  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion

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
EST

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