Jupiter and Venus gathered in late summer in the evening sky but never reached conjunction because Venus began retrograding, heading for inferior con- junction on November 2, before having a chance to meet up with Jupiter. Compare this scene to a similar one in September 2018, which is 24 years into the future from this point (three cycles of Venus and two cycles of Jupiter). The pair will have a conjunction in the morning sky in January 1995.
The picture was taken with a Nikon FE2 using a 28 mm lens, probably wide open at f/3.5 for about 10 seconds and then scanned in 2024. The location was near my apartment off of Route 17 northwest of Fredericksburg in Stafford County, a location which has now succumbed to development completely. A picture from the same spot in 2026 would be totally swamped with artificial light from the development.
On this date, Jupiter was at magnitude -1.85 with a diameter of 33.0"; Venus' magnitude was -4.48 with a diameter of 31.2". Their separation at the time of my photo was 8°59'57".
During autumn evenings, the angle made by the western horizon and ecliptic is very shallow, so you might expect that a line made by Venus and Jupiter would reflect that, but in this case it does not ~ its steepness is a reflection of the fact that Venus' ecliptic latitude is well below the ecliptic. So, during every one of its apparitions mimicking the current one (the years 1986, 1994, 2002, 2010, 2018, and 2026)