The Moon and Mars will make a close approach, passing within a mere 19.3 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 8 days old.
From Fairfield , the pair will become visible at around 21:12 (EDT), 38° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 01:02.
The Moon will be at mag -12.0; and Mars will be at mag 0.4. Both objects will lie in the constellation Virgo.
They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also 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 | 12h19m10s | 2°14'S | Virgo | -12.0 | 31'59"5 |
| Mars | 12h19m50s | 1°57'S | Virgo | 0.4 | 8"3 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 93° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.
The sky on 17 Jul 2024
| The sky on 17 July 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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88% 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.
Related news
| 03 May 1950 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
| 25 Mar 1952 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 30 Apr 1952 | – Mars at opposition |
| 08 May 1952 | – Mars at perigee |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.