Venus and the Pleiades

As April kicks off take a look up after sunset and look for bright Venus shining high above the western horizon. If you look closely enough you will see that Venus is near a group of stars known as M45, or the Pleiades.

Venus has been quite the show-off during March, and she's not done yet. After dancing in the sky with Jupiter, and the moon, she's onto meeting with the seven sisters for four days. Venus will be close to Pleiades from April 1^st to the 4^th. On April 3^rd Venus will be it's closest when the planet pairs up with the clusters brightest star, Alcyone. It may be hard to make out much of the stars with M45 since Venus will be at a magnitude of -4.4, and Alcyone, the brightest star, shines at a magnitude 3.

Created using free astronomy software Cartes du Ciel.

This event isn't an extremely rare one like the transit of Venus across the sun coming up this June which I will discuss in another post later on. It actually happens in a cycle of 8 year cycle so if you miss it this year you'll have another chance in 2020, and 2028 is when Venus will be within the Pleiades cluster instead of skimming the edge.

I'm interested in how many stars will be visible with the bright planet so close. Looking forward to this with the unaided eye, and through the telescope. Hope to see some pictures from others for this even.

I leave this post with this video from Newsy talking about the Venus and Pleiades conjunction: