10/26/2018 – Ephemeris – Venus passes inferior conjunction with the Sun today

Ephemeris for Friday, October 26th. The Sun will rise at 8:12. It’ll be up for 10 hours and 27 minutes, setting at 6:40. The Moon, 2 days past full, will rise at 8:19 this evening.

Later this morning the planet Venus will pass in inferior conjunction with the Sun, moving officially from the evening sky to the morning sky. Inferior conjunctions are when Venus is between the Earth and the Sun. We haven’t seen Venus for over a month, it setting too soon after the Sun to be spotted. It’s appearance in the morning sky will be much more sudden. On fall mornings the ecliptic, the path of the Sun and most planets is more vertical in the sky, opposite that of the evning sky, so that Venus will suddenly appear. Being south of the Sun, it will take 3 days, next Monday morning to rise with the Sun, but after that Venus will rise 8 minutes earlier each morning for a while. It should be easily visible in two weeks as the bright Morning Star

The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.

Venus and the Sun recorded by the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) LASCO C3 coronagraph less than 24 hours before the actual instant of Inferior conjunction. Credit: ESA/NASA.