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Ephemeris: 03/21/2025 – Venus will pass inferior conjunction with the Sun tomorrow

March 21, 2025 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Friday, March 21st. Today the Sun will be up for 12 hours and 13 minutes, setting at 7:56, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:41. The Moon, 1 day before last quarter, will rise at 3:55 tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow Venus will be in inferior conjunction with the Sun. That means that Venus will be moving between the Earth and the Sun, on its way from the evening sky to the morning sky. Venus’ orbit has an inclination to the Earth’s orbit of 3.4° and when we are closest to Venus as we are now only 26 million miles (42 million kilometers) away, that inclination gets exaggerated so that Venus is almost nine degrees north of the Sun. Venus gets about 8 million miles (13 million kilometers) closer to us than Mars ever gets. Of course when Mars gets that close it is fully illuminated. When Venus is at its closest we’re looking at its night side and couldn’t see anything even if we didn’t have the glare of the Sun.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT – 4 hours). Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

Venus and its orbit near inferior conjunction March 22, 2025.
Venus and its orbit near inferior conjunction March 22, 2025, at local solar noon for Interlochen/Traverse City, MI (1:49 PM EDT). Both Venus and the Sun are enlarged by their glare. Both would appear as dots at this scale. Venus’ orbit is 93 degrees wide. Created using Stellarium and GIMP.
The Venus Cycle as seen by the Mayans,
The Venus cycle as described by the Mayans of Central America. Their cycle started four days after inferior conjunction, when Venus was first visible before sunrise, after inferior conjunction near the bottom of the diagram. Venus would spend 263 days in the morning sky, moving quickly to its greatest western elongation before slowly moving around to the back side of the Sun, disappearing around what we call superior conjunction. Then it would slowly separate itself from the Sun and slowly move into the evening sky around to its greatest eastern elongation and within three months would disappear again towards inferior conjunction.
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