The Moon and Mars will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 5°22' to the south of Mars. The Moon will be 2 days old.
From Columbus however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 12° above the horizon at dusk.
The Moon will be at mag -9.2 in the constellation Cetus, and Mars at mag 1.4 in the neighbouring constellation of Aries.
The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.
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 | 02h32m00s | 9°43'N | Cetus | -9.2 | 32'11"1 |
| Mars | 02h32m00s | 15°05'N | Aries | 1.4 | 3"9 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 22° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.
The sky on 18 Jun 2024
| The sky on 18 June 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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90% 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
| 04 Jun 1999 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
| 11 May 2001 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 13 Jun 2001 | – Mars at opposition |
| 21 Jun 2001 | – 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.