Astronomical Jeddah | A rare visible conjunction between Venus and Mercury on Friday, and will not be repeated until 12 years later

The weather of Arabia - Sinan Khalaf - is a rare astronomical event that astronomers around the world await, represented by an unusual conjunction between the planets of Venus and Mercury on Friday evening, May 28, where only 0.4 degrees will separate them, and will not be repeated by such a distance until 12 years later.

Mercury and Venus converge by vision and diverge in space

Abu Zahra added, the conjunction of Mercury and Venus will occur because they will share roughly the same line of vision, but they are not close to each other in space, on the day of conjunction, Mercury is 94,246,659 kilometers from Earth, while Venus is 243,844,529 kilometers away.

The conjunction of Mercury and Venus will be seen after sunset, looking to the west

He pointed out that the conjunction of Mercury and Venus will be observed after sunset and moving towards the beginning of the night towards the western horizon above the sunset site, and it is preferable that the observation be from a location where the western horizon is fully exposed, where Venus will be the brightest planet, visible to the naked eye after about 40 minutes. If not before) after sunset and Mercury will follow.

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The conjunction of Mercury and Venus will be seen for an hour and a quarter

Mercury and Venus will remain above the horizon for about an hour and a quarter after sunset, and regions in more northern latitudes will have longer to see the two planets, but they will follow the sun below the horizon shortly after in southern latitudes.

The conjunction of Mercury and Venus can be seen with the naked eye

And he continued, Venus and Mercury can be seen with the naked eye and there may be a need to use binoculars to view Mercury in the vicinity of Venus. The third brightest celestial body illuminating the sky after the sun and moon, respectively; At present, Venus is a few hundred times more luminous than Mercury.

Abu Zahira added, it can be seen that Mercury is now dimmer than it was at the beginning of the month in early May when the disk of Mercury was illuminated by more than 80% by sunlight, but by the end of the month, the bright part will shrink to 10%. This makes Mercury about 40 times fainter now than it was at the start of this month.

Mercury will appear as a crescent through a telescope

He pointed out that Mercury will appear through the telescope in a small crescent phase, diminishing in light of 12% at the present time, as for Venus, its disk will be in the diminishing humpback phase and 95% illuminated by sunlight.

In general, a day after the conjunction of Mercury and Venus , Venus will continue to rise away from the glow of the sunset and will remain in the evening sky for the rest of 2021, while Mercury will descend towards the sun, and will leave for the sky of dawn on June 11, and will become visible to the naked eye in late June early July 2021.