Close approach of the Moon and Venus

The Moon and Venus will make a close approach, passing within 2°44' of each other. The Moon will be 3 days old.

From Nicosia, the pair will become visible around 18:38 (EEST), 16° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 4 minutes after the Sun at 20:26.

The Moon will be at mag -10.7; and Venus will be at mag -4.2. Both objects will lie in the constellation Scorpius.

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

ObjectRight AscensionDeclinationConstellationMagnitudeAngular SizeThe

Moon16h01m50s-20°41'Scorpius-10.732'47"5Venus15h58m20s-23°18'Scorpius-4.220"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 46° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

THE SKY ON 09 OCTOBER 2021Sunrise 06:46 Sunset 18:22 Twilight ends 19:46 Twilight begins 05:22 Waxing Crescent 19% 3 days oldPlanetsRiseCulm.SetMercury06:5412:3318:12Venus10:3615:2920:22Moon09:5815:1720:28Mars06:4612:3318:21Jupiter15:5321:1202:31Saturn15:0520:1001:16All times shown in EEST.

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

05 Sep 2020 – Venus at highest altitude in morning sky29 Oct 2021 – Venus at greatest elongation east07 Dec 2021 – Venus at highest altitude in evening sky28 Feb 2022 – 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.