The Moon and Mars will make a close approach, passing within a mere 40.3 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Mars, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 11 days old.
From Jacksonville , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 19:25 (EDT), 49° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 21:37, 64° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 03:08, when they sink below 8° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.6; and Mars will be at mag -0.7. Both objects will lie in the constellation Leo.
They will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.
At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Mars around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 11h35m30s | 4°06'N | Leo | -12.6 | 32'33"0 |
| Mars | 11h36m50s | 4°42'N | Leo | -0.7 | 12"5 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 134° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.
The sky on 17 Jul 2024
| The sky on 17 July 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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89% 12 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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Source
The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.
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| 27 Mar 1950 | – Mars at perigee |
| 03 May 1950 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
| 25 Mar 1952 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 30 Apr 1952 | – Mars at opposition |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.