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 Asia and eastern Russia. 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 Fairfield.

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)
China 05:43–08:44
Russia 06:53–09:02
India 05:10–07:22
Mongolia 06:28–08:21
Pakistan 05:28–06:48
Saudi Arabia 05:21–06:14
Myanmar 05:36–07:23
Afghanistan 05:44–06:41
Iran 05:33–06:22
Japan 07:16–09:01
Thailand 05:46–07:07
Oman 05:18–06:17
Yemen 05:11–06:11
Laos 05:53–07:16
Vietnam 05:59–07:24
Nepal 05:40–07:03
North Korea 07:04–08:42
Bangladesh 05:35–07:06
South Korea 07:04–08:39
United Arab Emirates 05:30–06:14
Tajikistan 06:07–06:42
Somalia 05:13–06:07
Kyrgyzstan 06:21–06:51
Sri Lanka 05:14–06:18
Bhutan 05:43–07:10
Taiwan 07:04–07:53
Alaska 08:09–09:00
Kazakhstan 06:27–06:50
Qatar 05:37–06:10
Cambodia 06:12–06:36
Maldives 05:08–06:08
Hong Kong 06:40–07:31
Bahrain 05:43–06:08
Macao 06:38–07:29
Midway Islands 08:34–09:23

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 01h59m10s 14°35'N Aries -4.4 0'22"

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
18 Oct 2063 09 Nov 2067 Occultations of Venus 30 May 2068 29 Sep 2073
19 Apr 2067 26 Feb 2068 Occultations 09 Mar 2068 21 Apr 2068

The sky on 22 Nov 2024

The sky on 22 November 2024
Sunrise
06:47
Sunset
16:28
Twilight ends
18:05
Twilight begins
05:10

21-day old moon
Waning Crescent

48%

21 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:40 13:06 17:32
Venus 10:13 14:39 19:06
Moon 22:16 05:32 12:36
Mars 20:52 04:15 11:38
Jupiter 17:26 00:53 08:20
Saturn 13:09 18:41 00:13
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.

Related news

22 Dec 2066  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
09 Mar 2068  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
15 Mar 2068  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
30 Jul 2068  –  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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