Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Thursday, March 28th.  The sun will rise at 7:30.  It’ll be up for 12 hours and 34 minutes, setting at 8:05.   The moon, 1 day past full, will rise at 10:01 this evening.

Venus is passing superior conjunction with the sun today.  Superior means Venus is passing behind, thought not directly behind the Sun.  You can see it only in the images of the SOHO spacecraft.  On the Internet google soho nasa to find the site.   Our last inferior conjunction of Venus was the transit of Venus last June, when Venus crossed the face of the sun.  Mars is about to pass in conjunction with the sun.  All its conjunctions are superior.  For about a month, starting April 4th. the satellites and rovers cannot receive transmissions from the earth due to the sun’s radio noise, so they are put into a passive state.  The Deep Space Network on the earth can pick up their transmissions, though not well during this period due to its greater sensitivity.

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

Addendum

Annotated SOHO LASCO C3 image of the sun, behind the occulting disk with Venus and Mars. Image: ESA, NASA