Look for! The Moon and Venus will experience a rare disappearing phenomenon during the day on June 17
The Moon will pass directly in front of Venus during a rare daylight occultation on June 17, 2026, creating one of the most unusual and technically challenging sky-watching events of the month.
For most of North America, the moon You will slip Venus In the middle of the afternoon. The chances of witnessing this rare event are good, provided that the sky is clear and dark blue.
There is one important problem: the event takes place in broad daylight. Between approximately 3:30 PM and 5:00 PM EDT, the Sun will remain high in the sky, while the Moon and Venus will sit about 38 degrees away from it. Anyone using binoculars or a telescope must be extremely careful not to accidentally sweep over it The sunwhich can cause immediate and permanent eye damage.
Don’t scan the daytime sky with binoculars or a telescope without knowing exactly where the sun is. To view the occultation safely, place your telescope in the physical shade of the building so that the sun is completely blocked by the roofline.
Read more: How to safely observe the sun (and what to look for)
The Moon will be a very thin waxing crescent, about 2 to 3 days old, and about 11% to 14% illuminated. Meanwhile, Venus will be on fire immensity -4.0.
While Venus is technically bright enough to see with the naked eye during the day if you have 20/20 vision and know exactly where to look, daylight erases a lot of the contrast. Binoculars or a telescope are exactly what you want here. The crescent moon acts as a perfect celestial guide to help locate the planet, and optics will provide a stunning view of Venus as it slips behind the unilluminated edge of the lunar disk.
Through a telescope, watching the jagged, unlit edge of the lunar crescent slowly consume the bright white disk of Venus against the blue daytime sky is an unforgettable sight.
If exploring the sky during the day isn’t your thing, the evening sky has another treat up its sleeve. The waxing crescent will sit near the Beehive Cluster (M44) on Cancer constellation.
Once the sky becomes completely dark — about 45 to 60 minutes after sunset — look toward the moon. Just a few steps away, you will find a faint, mysterious spot of light. This is the beehive set. Through binoculars, it turns completely into a sparkling scattering of dozens of faint blue-white stars. The cluster and crescent Moon span roughly the width of three full moons, and will fit comfortably within the same microscopic field of view, creating a stunning spectacle.
The bright, sunlit patch of the Moon will be dazzling, but the rest of the lunar sphere will visibly glow from sunlight reflecting off Earth’s oceans and pulling into the Moon. This effect, known as Earthshine, makes the Moon appear strikingly three-dimensional through binoculars.
The Moon and the Beehive constellation also provide an excellent target for a quick, large-scale astrophotography project. Mount a DSLR camera with a 135mm lens on a tripod and expose long enough to capture the swarm of twinkling beehive stars while keeping the exposure short enough to maintain ground brightness on the dark side of the lunar crescent.
