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)
Russia 06:10–09:07
China 05:32–08:55
India 05:08–07:38
Kazakhstan 05:45–07:21
Mongolia 06:24–08:35
Pakistan 05:10–06:56
Iran 05:09–06:35
Afghanistan 05:16–06:53
Myanmar 05:35–07:40
Uzbekistan 05:35–06:52
Thailand 05:45–07:34
Japan 07:18–09:04
Turkmenistan 05:27–06:41
Vietnam 06:00–07:52
Kyrgyzstan 05:43–07:06
Oman 05:05–06:19
Laos 05:53–07:42
Tajikistan 05:35–06:54
Cambodia 06:01–07:25
Nepal 05:29–07:12
North Korea 07:13–08:53
Bangladesh 05:31–07:20
South Korea 07:13–08:50
Sri Lanka 05:17–06:14
United Arab Emirates 05:20–06:18
Taiwan 07:00–08:22
Bhutan 05:38–07:22
Saudi Arabia 05:20–06:12
Philippines 07:18–08:03
Hong Kong 06:38–08:06
Maldives 05:21–05:47
Paracel Islands 06:36–07:43
Macao 06:36–08:04

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 22h17m20s 12°15'S Aquarius -4.1 0'15"

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
05 Jun 2089 16 Apr 2091 Occultations of Venus 30 Jul 2092 14 Jan 2100
30 Dec 2091 30 Dec 2091 Occultations 20 Jan 2092 20 Jan 2092

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

45%

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.

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

15 Dec 2090  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
02 Mar 2092  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
10 Mar 2092  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
23 Jul 2092  –  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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