The Moon occults Venus — 14 September 2026

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

Daylight occultation of Venus by a three-day crescent Moon; the north limit runs across north India — Delhi misses, Mumbai gets an hour.

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 it is a near miss — from Jhansi Venus passes just 0.3′ outside the limb — and a graze seen from right on the line, Venus blinking in and out behind lunar mountains, is the finest view of all. The solid line is traced against the real lunar limb — LRO LOLA terrain, the mountains and valleys that are on the edge for this libration — and sits -2.1 to +3.0 km from the mean-sphere line (dotted).

The violet shading is where the Sun has set by the time of the event, so the reappearance happens 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 to the 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 is the moment Venus is fully hidden (its disc takes from the earlier time to slide in); reappears is when the first sliver returns. Where to look is the Moon's height above the horizon (0° is the horizon, 90° straight up) and compass direction at that moment, and whether the Sun is still up.

How to watch

This one happens in daylight. Venus is bright enough to see against a blue sky if you know exactly where to look — and today the Moon is the finder: a thin crescent, three days old, about 40° east of the Sun. Find the crescent first (shade the Sun with a building), then look for a hard white point beside its dark edge. Binoculars make it easy; a telescope shows Venus as a fat crescent (37″ across, 29% lit) sliding behind the mountains of the unlit limb, then popping back out at the bright crescent an hour later.

Because the limb it disappears behind is unlit, the disappearance is the harder half to catch — you are watching a bright point vanish into what looks like empty sky. The reappearance at the sunlit crescent is the easy, spectacular half. Never sweep near the Sun with binoculars.

Method & accuracy

Positions from the JPL DE431 ephemeris (Skyfield), ΔT = 69.1 s. The city table's contact times and the solid limit line use the real lunar limb — the silhouette of LRO LOLA terrain (LDEM_64, ~0.5 km) at each observer's own libration — so they carry the mountains and valleys that a mean sphere misses (up to a few seconds at ordinary contacts, 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.