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

Lunar occultation of Venus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Lunar Occultations feed

Objects: Venus

The Moon will pass in front of Venus, creating a lunar occultation visible from countries and territories including Brazil, Argentina, Antarctica and Chile amongst others. Although the occultation will only be visible across part of the world – because the Moon is so close to the Earth that its position in the sky varies by as much as two degrees across the world – a close conjunction between the pair will be more widely visible.

Unfortunately the occultation will not be visible from Ashburn.

The map below shows the visibility of the occultation across the world. Separate contours show where the disappearance of Venus is visible (shown in red), and where its reappearance is visible (shown in blue). Solid contours show where each event is likely to be visible through binoculars at a reasonable altitude in the sky. Dotted contours indicate where each event occurs above the horizon, but may not be visible due to the sky being too bright or the Moon being very close to the horizon.

Map showing where the occultation is visible

Outside the contours, the Moon will not pass in front of Venus at any time, or is below the horizon at the time of the occultation. However, a close conjunction between the pair will be visible across much of the world.

The map can be downloaded in PNG , PDF or SVG format. A KMZ file , is also available, which can be opened in Google Earth to provide a higher resolution map.

The animation below shows the path of the occultation across the Earth's globe. The red circle shows where the Moon appears in front of Venus.

You can download this video in MP4 or OGG format.

A complete list of the countries and territories where the occultation will be visible is as follows:

Country Time span
(UTC)
Brazil 17:13–19:26
Argentina 16:34–18:52
Antarctica 16:37–18:04
Chile 16:30–18:10
Paraguay 17:16–18:52
Bolivia 17:20–18:40
Uruguay 17:06–18:46
Falkland Islands 16:54–18:09
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands 17:35–18:23
Saint Helena 18:20–19:16

Lunar occultations are only ever visible from a small fraction of the Earth's surface. Since the Moon is much closer to the Earth than other celestial objects, its exact position in the sky differs depending on your exact location on Earth due to its large parallax. The position of the Moon as seen from two points on opposite sides of the Earth varies by up to two degrees, or four times the diameter of the full moon.

This means that if the Moon is aligned to pass in front of a particular object for an observer on one side of the Earth, it will appear up to two degrees away from that object on the other side of the Earth.

The position of Venus at the moment of the occultation will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 01h11m50s 6°45'N Pisces -3.9 0'10"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occultations

« Previous Next »
Visible from the Contiguous United States Worldwide Worldwide Visible from the Contiguous United States
13 Sep 2031 23 Jun 2033 Occultations of Venus 06 Dec 2034 12 Dec 2039
25 Feb 2034 25 Feb 2034 Occultations 25 Mar 2034 25 Mar 2034

The sky on 21 Mar 2034

The sky on 21 March 2034
Sunrise
07:09
Sunset
19:21
Twilight ends
20:51
Twilight begins
05:39

1-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

4%

1 day old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:21 11:47 17:13
Venus 07:59 14:24 20:49
Moon 07:55 14:26 21:06
Mars 09:08 16:11 23:13
Jupiter 06:56 12:46 18:36
Saturn 12:49 20:11 03:34
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

31 Jul 2033  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
04 Jun 2034  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
12 Aug 2034  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
09 Dec 2034  –  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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39.04°N
77.49°W
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