The Crescent and the Star: When the Young Moon Meets Venus or Jupiter, Every Evening to 2030

The Short Answer

A thin crescent with a bright point of light beside it is not only a picture. It is a real sight of the evening sky: the young Moon passing Venus, the brightest planet, or Jupiter, the next brightest, in the twilight after sunset.

Counting the evenings when, half an hour after sunset, the crescent is under five days old and within 6 degrees of Venus or Jupiter, with both above the horizon, Mecca has 16 such evenings from 9 October 2026 to 2030: 13 with Venus and 3 with Jupiter.

• The closest is on 30 November 2027. Half an hour after sunset in Mecca, at 18:07, the crescent is two and a half days old, 6 per cent lit and 16 degrees up in the south-west, and Venus is 1.3 degrees from it, less than three Moon widths. The same evening, the gap is 1.8 degrees from London and 2.0 degrees from Jakarta.
• In early 2028 the crescent passes Venus every month from January to May.
• Another close one is 14 May 2029: 2.8 degrees from Mecca and 1.4 degrees from London, but low, with the Moon only 5 or 6 degrees up.

The sky of Mecca on 30 November 2027, and every meeting to 2030:

Why Venus Keeps Meeting the Crescent

Venus is closer to the Sun than the Earth is, so it never strays far from the Sun in our sky: at most about 46 or 47 degrees. For several months at a time it shines in the west after sunset as the evening star, and then for several months in the east before sunrise as the morning star.

The young crescent is always in the same part of the sky, a little above the western horizon after sunset, a few degrees to a few tens of degrees from the Sun. So while Venus is an evening star, each new crescent passes it, once a month. That is why the meetings come in runs: the end of one in October 2026, then November 2027 to May 2028 and May to December 2029, the periods when Venus is in the evening sky. Between those runs Venus is in the morning sky or too close to the Sun, and the evening crescent never meets it.

Jupiter is different. It is far beyond the Earth and goes round the Sun in 12 years, so it can be anywhere along the Moon's path. It meets the evening crescent only in the months when it is low in the west after sunset, before it sinks into the Sun's glare: in 2027 on 9 June and 3 August, and in 2030 on 28 October, seen from Mecca.

Why the Distance Depends on Where You Stand

The Moon is so close that its position against the planets shifts with the observer's place on the Earth, by up to about one degree. The Moon also moves its own width across the sky every hour, and sunset comes at different times in different places. So the same meeting looks different from city to city: 1.3 degrees from Mecca, 1.8 from London, 2.0 from Jakarta on 30 November 2027. Some evenings show a close pair in one country and nothing special in another.

Where the Star Is, and Where It Is Not

The lit side of the crescent always faces the Sun, below the horizon, so the horns point up and away from it. A planet can stand on any side of the crescent: above it, beside it, or below the horns. On 30 November 2027, seen from Mecca, Venus stands a little above and to the right of the crescent.

What the sky never shows is a planet or star on the dark part of the Moon's disc. The unlit part of the Moon is still solid, and it hides whatever is behind it. When the Moon does pass in front of a planet, an occultation, the planet disappears behind it.

Can a Planet Help With the Crescent Sighting?

A bright planet near the crescent can guide the eye in the twilight: Venus appears in the sky earlier than the crescent and is easy to find. But a planet is also a classic source of mistaken reports. A low Venus seen through haze can look larger than a point, and an observer who expects the crescent may take one for the other. A planet is always a point of light, however bright; the crescent is a thin arc. On the evenings of the first crescent of a month, the crescent is usually younger than in these meetings and much lower, as explained in the science behind the crescent.

Every Meeting From Mecca, 2026 to 2030

All positions are half an hour after sunset in Mecca. Nearby cities see nearly the same, but the distance can differ by up to a degree.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the crescent and star a single event?

No. It is a chance alignment of two bodies at very different distances: the Moon is about 380,000 km away, Venus tens of millions of km. They only look close.

How bright is Venus on these evenings?

Between magnitude minus 3.8 and minus 4.9, brighter than anything else in the night sky except the Moon. It is often visible before the sky is fully dark.

Will I see it from my city?

If your evening sky is clear in the west, on the same evenings or one evening either side. The table is for Mecca; the order of the meetings is the same everywhere, but the distance and the heights change.

See Also

• Find the Qibla from the Sun's shadow
• When the Moon stands over the Kaaba
• Why the crescent tilts with latitude and season
• The science behind the crescent

References

• Positions are computed with the astronomy engine of this site, as seen from the ground (topocentric), with refraction, half an hour after sunset. The numbers are reproduced by docs/research/sky-events.mjs and computed by packages/astronomy/src/skyEvents.ts in the Hilal Vision source.