{"id":86483,"date":"2025-10-20T11:09:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T11:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/86483\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T11:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T11:09:08","slug":"the-moon-and-venus-before-dawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/86483\/","title":{"rendered":"The Moon and Venus before dawn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\tBack to Article List\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tA gibbous Venus and a crescent Moon share space in Virgo this morning before sunrise, not far from the double star Porrima.\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"620\" height=\"439\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/10192025.png\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tVenus and the Moon rise before the Sun this morning, visible in the constellation Virgo. The double star Porrima is also available for those with a clearer eastern horizon. Credit: Stellarium\/USGS\/Celestia\/Clementine\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>On October 18, the predawn sky features a close celestial alignment of the Moon and Venus within the constellation Virgo.<br \/>\nVenus appears as a magnitude -3.9 object, exhibiting a 94% illuminated gibbous phase with an 11 arcsecond disk, while the Moon is a delicate, 4% illuminated waning crescent positioned 4 degrees west of Venus.<br \/>\nObservations include the 3rd-magnitude double star Porrima (Gamma Virginis), located below the Moon and Venus, characterized by components separated by approximately 4 arcseconds.<br \/>\nThe Moon is predicted to pass 4 degrees due south of Venus at 6 P.M. EDT, with specific local times provided for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.astronomy.com\/the-sky-this-week\/the-sky-this-week-from-october-17-to-24-2025\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sky This Week<\/a>\u00a0column.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">October 18: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.astronomy.com\/observing\/the-sky-today-saturday-october-18-2025\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Io, Europa, and their shadows cross Jupiter<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Moon and Venus hang close together in the predawn sky, sharing the sky in the constellation Virgo. An hour before sunrise, look east to spot Venus, the brightest point of light, blazing at magnitude \u20133.9 nearly 7\u00b0 above the horizon and climbing. The delicate crescent Moon lies to its upper right, just 4\u00b0 to the planet\u2019s west.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Through a telescope, Venus appears 94 percent lit, its gibbous phase opposite the Moon\u2019s thin crescent phase, with only some 4 percent of our satellite lit this morning. Venus\u2019 disk stretches 11\u201d on the sky, making its phase readily visible in the eyepiece.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Below them is the 3rd-magnitude star Porrima (Gamma Virginis), a famous double star with components about 4\u201d apart, easy to split in a telescope. They are nearly identical blue-white suns that shine at roughly the same magnitude.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Moon will pass 4\u00b0 due south of Venus at 6 P.M. EDT this evening.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Sunrise:\u00a07:15 A.M.<br \/>Sunset:\u00a06:14 P.M.<br \/>Moonrise:\u00a05:27 A.M.\u00a0<br \/>Moonset:\u00a05:18 P.M.<br \/>Moon Phase:\u00a0Waning crescent (2%)<br \/>*Times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset are given in local time from 40\u00b0 N 90\u00b0 W. The Moon\u2019s illumination is given at 10 P.M. local time from the same location.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List A gibbous Venus and a crescent Moon share space in Virgo this morning before&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,2928,141,43844,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-86483","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-observing","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-sky-tonight","13":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}