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, Venus and Mars

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon, Venus and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 4°33' of each other. The Moon will be 3 days old.

From Ashburn , the trio will become visible at around 17:17 (EDT), 16° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 31 minutes after the Sun at 19:31.

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 -10.7; Venus will be at mag -4.5; and Mars will be at mag 1.1. The trio will lie in the constellation Sagittarius.

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 trio 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 trio at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
The Moon 18h11m40s 22°46'S Sagittarius -10.7 32'27"1
Venus 18h14m00s 27°17'S Sagittarius -4.5 29"3
Mars 18h15m50s 24°43'S Sagittarius 1.1 4"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 45° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.

The sky on 9 Nov 2029

The sky on 9 November 2029
Sunrise
06:43
Sunset
17:00
Twilight ends
18:31
Twilight begins
05:11

3-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

19%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:17 12:14 17:12
Venus 10:43 15:07 19:32
Moon 10:33 15:26 20:23
Mars 10:33 15:09 19:45
Jupiter 06:06 11:23 16:40
Saturn 17:18 00:13 07:09
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.

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18 Mar 2030  –  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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Ashburn

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39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

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