Saturn and Mars will share the same right ascension, with Saturn passing 59' to the north of Mars.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From Cambridge , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 12° above the horizon. They will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 04:07 (EDT) – 2 hours and 14 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 12° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:39.
Saturn will be at mag 0.5, and Mars at mag 1.2, 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 Saturn 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 |
| Saturn | 19h35m50s | 21°22'S | Sagittarius | 0.5 | 15"5 |
| Mars | 19h35m50s | 22°22'S | Sagittarius | 1.2 | 4"8 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 47° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.
The sky on 27 Jul 2024
| The sky on 27 July 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
47% 22 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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
| 11 Sep 1989 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 04 May 1990 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 14 Jul 1990 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 23 Sep 1990 | – Saturn 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.