© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

Venus at inferior solar conjunction

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Inner Planets feed

Objects: Venus
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The sky at

Venus will pass very close to the Sun in the sky as its orbit carries it between the Sun and Earth.

This occurs once in every synodic cycle of the planet (584 days), and marks the end of Venus's apparition in the evening sky and its transition to become a morning object over the next few weeks.

At closest approach, Venus will appear at a separation of only 8° from the Sun, making it totally unobservable for several weeks while it is lost in the Sun's glare.

Venus will also pass perigee – the time when it is closest to the Earth – at around the same time, since it will lie on exactly the same side of the Sun as the Earth in the Solar System. It will move to within a distance of 0.28 AU from the Earth, making it appear with its largest angular size. If it could be observed, it would measure 59.6 arcsec in diameter, whilst appearing completely unilluminated.

The position of Venus at the moment it passes solar conjunction will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
Venus 12h08m20s 9°58'S Virgo 59.6"
Sun 12h21m 2°20'S Virgo 31'55"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 28 Mar 2024

The sky on 28 March 2024
Sunrise
06:39
Sunset
19:05
Twilight ends
20:29
Twilight begins
05:15

18-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

86%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:16 13:52 20:29
Venus 05:59 11:49 17:39
Moon 21:33 02:59 08:18
Mars 05:14 10:48 16:21
Jupiter 08:32 15:17 22:02
Saturn 05:40 11:21 17:02
All times shown in PDT.

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

22 Jul 2106  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
26 Nov 2106  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
11 Dec 2106  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
28 Feb 2108  –  Venus at greatest elongation east

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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