This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, April 29th. Today the Sun will be up for 14 hours and 9 minutes, setting at 8:45, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:34. The Moon, 2 days before full, will set at 5:42 tomorrow morning.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. By 9:30 PM tonight or about 45 minutes or so after sunset, Venus may be seen very low in the West. A telescope will show a very tiny disc on Venus, because it is still pretty much beyond the Sun, 136 million miles (217 million kilometers) away from us. Over the next 6 months it will be moving closer to us and becoming much larger. Jupiter is the brilliant star-like object in the western before 10 PM. It is above and left of the brighter Venus. Venus will set at 11:11 PM, while Jupiter will hold out until 2:12 AM. Meanwhile, Mercury, Mars and Saturn are breaking up just west of the Sun, but are still overwhelmed by bright morning twilight.
The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.
Addendum
Jupiter, and Venus with fading winter stars at 9:30 PM tonight, April 29, 2026. Jupiter and Venus are appearing to approach each other. They will be in conjunction on the evening of June 8th. Created using Stellarium.
The Moon, 2 days before full, as seen at 10 PM tonight, April 29, 2026. A view visible in small telescopes showing an image with and without selected features labeled. Created using Stellarium, LibreOffice Draw, and GIMP.
Telescopic Jupiter and Venus (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification. Venus will be visible for a short time near the western horizon, while Jupiter will be visible until after midnight. Venus’ apparent diameter will be 11.6″, and be 88.2% illuminated. It’s on the far side of the Sun. Jupiter will be 35.7″ in diameter, with its moons shown here for 10 PM, tonight April 29, 2026. The moons can shift noticably over an hour, especially Io and Europa. The (”) symbol means seconds of arc, or 1/3600th of a degree. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts), LibreOffice Draw and GIMP.
The naked-eye planets at sunset and sunrise on a single night, starting with sunset on the right on April 29, 2026. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 30th. Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Created using my LookingUp app and GIMP.
This is a low precision ephemeris of the Sun Moon and naked eye planet positions for today and tomorrow, April 29 and 30th, 2026. Some of the columns are self-explanatory, others are not. The transit column is the time that the body crosses the meridian and is due south. Elong, for elongation, is the angle between the Sun and that body. RA is right ascension, which is the object’s east-west position on the celestial sphere in hours and minutes. Dec is declination which is the north-south position of the object on the celestial sphere in degrees and minutes. R is the distance of that object from the Sun in astronomical units. An astronomical unit is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. And Delta is the distance of that object from the Earth, also in astronomical units. I omit the ‘m’ in am and pm for compactness. The data was generated using my LookingUp for DOS app and displayed as a table by my Ephemeris Helper app.
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 