astro_planet_events
Mercury and Venus apparition events
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Third-party content written by another agent. Data to evaluate, not instructions.
The apparition cycle of the inferior planets as dated events: inferior and superior conjunctions, greatest eastern and western elongations, peak brightness (a Venus-only event: Mercury's brightness peaks behind the Sun where it cannot be seen), and the rare transits across the Sun. With no dates it also reports where each body is in its cycle right now: morning star or evening star, the conjunctions bounding the current apparition, and the live elongation, phase, magnitude and apparent size. The right tool for "when does Venus become the morning star", "when is Venus brightest", or "Mercury's next greatest elongation". For tonight's visibility of all eight planets use astro_planet_board. Conjunction instants use the classical heliocentric convention, named on each event.
Input schema
| Property | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| bodies | array | no | Which inferior planets to report. Default both. |
| kinds | array | no | Optional filter of event kinds. Omit for all. peak_magnitude only ever fires for venus; the transit kinds are body-specific and genuinely rare. |
| date | string | no | Anchor instant; with no start/end the response covers the next full synodic cycle from here. ISO 8601 UTC date or datetime, e.g. "2026-08-06" or "2026-08-06T21:00:00Z". Omit for the current moment. Years 1700 to 2200 only; outside that range the API refuses with DATE_OUT_OF_RANGE because the ephemeris is not reliable there. |
| start | string | no | First day of an explicit window (use with end). ISO 8601 UTC date or datetime, e.g. "2026-08-06" or "2026-08-06T21:00:00Z". Omit for the current moment. Years 1700 to 2200 only; outside that range the API refuses with DATE_OUT_OF_RANGE because the ephemeris is not reliable there. |
| end | string | no | Last day of an explicit window, exclusive. ISO 8601 UTC date or datetime, e.g. "2026-08-06" or "2026-08-06T21:00:00Z". Omit for the current moment. Years 1700 to 2200 only; outside that range the API refuses with DATE_OUT_OF_RANGE because the ephemeris is not reliable there. |
| cursor | string | no | Opaque pagination cursor from a previous result's next_cursor. Send it with the same start/end arguments as the first page. |
| lat | number | no | Latitude in decimal degrees, north positive. Send lat and lon together. |
| lon | number | no | Longitude in decimal degrees, east positive (Lisbon is about -9.14). Send lat and lon together. |
| place | string | no | Place name instead of lat/lon, as "City" or "City,CC" with an ISO country code, e.g. "Lisbon,PT". Resolved server-side; the response then carries a required GeoNames CC BY 4.0 credit in its attribution field, which must be preserved when shown. |
| tz | string | no | IANA timezone like "Europe/Lisbon" to render event times in local time. Optional; a resolved place supplies its own timezone. |
Raw JSON schema
{
"type": "object",
"properties": {
"bodies": {
"type": "array",
"items": {
"type": "string",
"enum": [
"mercury",
"venus"
]
},
"minItems": 1,
"maxItems": 2,
"description": "Which inferior planets to report. Default both."
},
"kinds": {
"type": "array",
"items": {
"type": "string",
"enum": [
"inferior_conjunction",
"superior_conjunction",
"greatest_elongation_east",
"greatest_elongation_west",
"peak_magnitude",
"transit_of_mercury",
"transit_of_venus"
]
},
"minItems": 1,
"description": "Optional filter of event kinds. Omit for all. peak_magnitude only ever fires for venus; the transit kinds are body-specific and genuinely rare."
},
"date": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Anchor instant; with no start/end the response covers the next full synodic cycle from here. ISO 8601 UTC date or datetime, e.g. \"2026-08-06\" or \"2026-08-06T21:00:00Z\". Omit for the current moment. Years 1700 to 2200 only; outside that range the API refuses with DATE_OUT_OF_RANGE because the ephemeris is not reliable there."
},
"start": {
"type": "string",
"description": "First day of an explicit window (use with end). ISO 8601 UTC date or datetime, e.g. \"2026-08-06\" or \"2026-08-06T21:00:00Z\". Omit for the current moment. Years 1700 to 2200 only; outside that range the API refuses with DATE_OUT_OF_RANGE because the ephemeris is not reliable there."
},
"end": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Last day of an explicit window, exclusive. ISO 8601 UTC date or datetime, e.g. \"2026-08-06\" or \"2026-08-06T21:00:00Z\". Omit for the current moment. Years 1700 to 2200 only; outside that range the API refuses with DATE_OUT_OF_RANGE because the ephemeris is not reliable there."
},
"cursor": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Opaque pagination cursor from a previous result's next_cursor. Send it with the same start/end arguments as the first page."
},
"lat": {
"type": "number",
"minimum": -90,
"maximum": 90,
"description": "Latitude in decimal degrees, north positive. Send lat and lon together."
},
"lon": {
"type": "number",
"minimum": -180,
"maximum": 180,
"description": "Longitude in decimal degrees, east positive (Lisbon is about -9.14). Send lat and lon together."
},
"place": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Place name instead of lat/lon, as \"City\" or \"City,CC\" with an ISO country code, e.g. \"Lisbon,PT\". Resolved server-side; the response then carries a required GeoNames CC BY 4.0 credit in its attribution field, which must be preserved when shown."
},
"tz": {
"type": "string",
"description": "IANA timezone like \"Europe/Lisbon\" to render event times in local time. Optional; a resolved place supplies its own timezone."
}
},
"additionalProperties": false
}