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The Moon and Venus will have a beautiful conjunction on Sunday, July 15th.
Watch for spectacular pairings of the thin crescent moon crescent with Mercury in the early evening. On July 14 and with Venus on the 15th.
Sky & Telescope / Leah Tiscione
Dramatically suspended in the west during the evening of Sunday, July 15, will be a brilliant "star" and growing: Venus and the Moon . The cosmic couple will attract attention if your sky is clear.
Look for them west, at dusk. The best viewing will probably be about 40 to 60 minutes after your local sunset time. Hunt them too soon, and the sky will be too bright to show them. Look too late, and they will sink very low on the way to bed.
Also, look carefully a little lower right for the Regulus star to flicker. It is slightly less than 1% as brilliant as Venus.
In addition, you might also be able to catch the planet Mercury much further down right. A line of Venus through Regulus points directly to her. Binoculars will help. (All descriptions are for viewers in North America.)
After sundown on July 15, the 13% lunar crescent is about 2 degrees from dazzling Venus . But the gap closes dramatically – at only ½ ° – when the pair appears on the west coast. Note: do not wait until 10pm. to look for them, because then they might have already put your position.
Sky & Telescope / Stellarium
The proximity of the Moon and Venus will depend on where you are. Seen at dusk in the eastern time zone, they appear separated by about 2 ° – twice the width of your finger held at arm's length. Seen from the West, they will be less than one finger apart – only ½ °!
Inside the sunny crescent, you may notice that the rest of the moon is faintly shining. What you see is called earthshine . It is caused by the almost full Earth in the moon sky illuminating the nocturnal lunar landscape – in the same way that the full moon illuminates the nocturnal landscapes of the Earth.
If you have a telescope, that's the right time to take it out. In addition to the features on the Moon, she will show that Venus has a tiny gibbous disc dazzling – demonstrating that this planet has phases specific to the Moon.
Moon-Venus pairings are not unusual, but this one is more dramatic than most. Whenever Venus shines in the twilight sky, as has been the case since the end of winter, the crescent moon pbades through it once a month – though not usually so close. For example, they will appear much further away at their next meetings on August 13 and September 11 (again for North America), and they will also be closer to the horizon.
The glory of a Moon-Venus twinning is that these are the two brightest astronomical objects in our sky after the Sun. The moon looks bright because it's so close to us: about 240,000 kilometers, no further than what one would hope to drive a car with good maintenance and a little luck. The Moon is 100 times closer to us than the nearest planet.
"Nearest Planet" often means Venus, which is close to us as the planets and as close to the Sun, so it illuminates very brightly. And it is covered with white clouds, very reflective.
"Close", however, is still a relative thing in astronomy. Venus and the Moon might look like bewitching companions Sunday night, but Venus – at 88 million miles – will be 380 times farther.
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