The Moon and Mars will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 32' to the south of Mars. The Moon will be 16 days old.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 23:02, when they reach an altitude of 7° above your south-eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 02:18, 21° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 04:46, 13° above your south-western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.7, and Mars at mag -2.3, both in the constellation Sagittarius.
The pair 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.
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 | 19h38m10s | 26°37'S | Sagittarius | -12.7 | 33'02"2 |
| Mars | 19h38m10s | 26°05'S | Sagittarius | -2.3 | 21"1 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 159° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.
The sky on 28 Jun 2024
| The sky on 28 June 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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41% 22 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
| 08 Jun 1986 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 10 Jul 1986 | – Mars at opposition |
| 16 Jul 1986 | – Mars at perigee |
| 12 Aug 1986 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.