Mars and M8 will make a close approach, passing within a mere 50.4 arcminutes of each other.
From Jacksonville , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 02:33 (EDT) and reaching an altitude of 29° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:49.
Mars will be at mag 0.9; and M8 will be at mag 5.8. Both objects will lie in the constellation Sagittarius.
They will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.
A graph of the angular separation between Mars and M8 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 |
| Mars | 18h03m40s | 23°32'S | Sagittarius | 0.9 | 6"3 |
| M8 | 18h03m40s | 24°22'S | Sagittarius | 5.8 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 74° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.
The sky on 1 Oct 2024
| The sky on 1 October 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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0% 28 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.
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.