The Moon occults Venus — 14 September 2026

Lunar occultation of the planet Venus · Monday 14 September 2026 · India

A daylight occultation of Venus by a thin crescent Moon. Mumbai sees it for an hour; Delhi misses it.

Closest approach 17:04 IST (geocentric, 0.48° centre to centre) · Moon 3.3 days old, 12% lit, 41° from the Sun

Where it can be seen

The gold line is the north limit: along it Venus grazes the Moon's northern edge. North of the line, Venus misses: from Jhansi it passes 0.3′ outside the Moon. Right on the line it grazes, blinking behind lunar mountains. The solid line uses the Moon's real, mountainous edge. It lies -2.1 to +3.0 km from the smooth-sphere line (dotted).

In the violet area the Sun has set, so the reappearance is in a darkening sky.

Tap the map to set your location; pinch it to zoom in. Take the graze line with you: KML for Google Earth / Maps · GPX for a phone GPS app.

At the Moon's edge

Venus's path across the Moon from your location. North up, east left, as in binoculars. Times here are computed in your browser from the same ephemeris as the table, to the same ±2 s. Drag the slider to move it along its track.

City by city

Times are against the real lunar limb (LRO LOLA terrain at each city's own libration). Disappears: Venus is fully hidden (it starts sliding in at the earlier time). Reappears: the first sliver returns. Where to look: the Moon's height (0° horizon, 90° overhead), its direction, and whether the Sun is up.

How to watch

This one happens in daylight. Venus shows in a blue sky if you know where to look, and today the thin crescent Moon points the way, 40° east of the Sun. Find the crescent first (shade the Sun with a building), then look for a hard white point by its dark edge. Binoculars make it easy. A telescope shows Venus as a fat crescent (37″ across, 29% lit), slipping behind the Moon's dark edge and reappearing at the bright one an hour later.

The disappearance is harder to catch: Venus vanishes into the dark edge, which looks like empty sky. The reappearance at the sunlit crescent is the easy, striking half. Never sweep near the Sun with binoculars.

Method & accuracy

Positions from the JPL DE431 ephemeris (Skyfield), ΔT = 69.1 s. City times and the solid limit line use the real lunar limb: LRO LOLA terrain (LDEM_64, ~0.5 km) as each observer sees it. That changes times by a few seconds, or tens of seconds near a graze. The any-location solver in your browser and the shaded region still use the mean sphere of 1737.4 km (±2 s). Venus's own disc (37″ across) is included: partial contacts are the from/to times. The numbers behind this page: venus-2026-09-14.json. Generated 2026-09-14.