The Moon and Mars will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 2°06' to the south of Mars. The Moon will be 19 days old.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 22:20, when they reach an altitude of 9° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 03:59, 57° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 06:49, 40° above your south-western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.3, and Mars at mag -0.1, both in the constellation Leo.
The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Mars around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 11h10m30s | 6°49'N | Leo | -12.3 | 29'31"8 |
| Mars | 11h10m30s | 8°55'N | Leo | -0.1 | 10"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 120° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.
The sky on 18 May 2024
| The sky on 18 May 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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85% 10 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
| 02 Mar 1978 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
| 16 Jan 1980 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 25 Feb 1980 | – Mars at opposition |
| 26 Feb 1980 | – 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.