Venus has been overhauling Jupiter. The two brightest planets will be at conjunction on June 9.
Here is the after-sunset scene nearest to the time of the conjunction for an American location.
Venus-Jupiter conjunctions occur almost every year. The topic is explained, with tables of dates, in pages 82-87 of our book Venus: a Longer View.
To compare the 2026 conjunction with the previous and next:
2025 Aug 12 Venus 0.86° S of Jupiter; 36° from Sun in morning sky
2026 Jun 9 Venus 1.6° N of Jupiter; 37° from Sun in evening sky
2027 Aug 25 Venus 0.53° N of Jupiter; 4° from Sun in evening sky
2026 has the advantage of being in the evening sky, and much farther out from the Sun than in 2027. It is not such a close “double star” as either of the others.
The two planets are at the time shining at -4.0 and -1.9 on the logarithmic magnitude scale, which mean that in combination they are like a star of magnitude -4.15.
In this space view, the dashed line is the vernal equinox direction, longitude 0. The viewpoint is 6 AU (astronomical unit, the Sun-Earth distance, about 150 million kilometers or 93 million miles)from the Sun, and at latitude 15° north of the ecliptic plane. The Sun is exaggerated 5 times in size, the inner planets 300 times, Jupiter 50 times. The paths of the planes are shown in June; and the sight-lines from Earth to Venus and Jupiter at June 9.
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The Jupiter Venus conjunction of 2002 was on June 3 according to my planetarium software, this one in 2026 is on June 9, and the 2050 event (which will occur in Cancer almost at the Beehive Cluster) will be on June 15. Following the progression of these events from one instance to the next and seeing how they evolve is fascinating to me.
Although I’ve gotten many pictures of Venus and Jupiter closing their gap over the last month, this evening here in Virginia clouds totally obscured the scene :(
Eric, you deserved better luck.
Haha, thank you Guy! This evening (June 10) we did enjoy a return to clear skies, the advantage of which I took, as follows:
http://www.starvergnuegen.com/astropix/2026/06_jun/2026_06_10_planets.html
Just tell us the name of whatever system it is that enables you to add the labels and boundaries to so impressively your photos; not that I want to try it.
Guy, my technique is extremely low tech and frankly tedious LOL. I put my photos in powerpoint, type in the labels, and then put a screen capture of the same sky scene from my planetarium software that of course includes constellation boundaries and the ecliptic if I want that as well. Then I manually draw the constellation boundary lines using power point annotation over top of the screen capture from the planetarium software, then draw lines between three or four of the prominent stars in the scene, then I group those lines along with the constellation boundary lines into one group, copy it and paste it on top of the photo. Then I resize and reorient the grouped annotation to match the stars on the image, then ungroup it and delete the lines that I drew between the stars ~ what remains is the constellation boundaries. Usually a little hand-editing of those is required but that’s basically how I do it. I can afford to use that laborious method because I’m retired LOL!
Most of my web pages are coded so that you don’t see the annotation until you mouse over the image, which is pretty rudimentary. Unfortunately all my pages are designed to be viewed on a computer that has a mouse and keyboard ~ I don’t have the knowledge or skill to adapt my web content for viewing on a small mobile device, which is how most people consume content, so I’m kind of behind the times LOL.
Here in the Southern Hemisphere, Jupiter is above Venus in the northwest after sunset.
This is a very clear and precise description. I’m looking forward to seeing the conjunction on Tues.