The planets Saturn and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 1°35' of each other.
From Cambridge , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 16° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 21:07 (EDT), 16° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 41 minutes after the Sun at 22:51.
Saturn will be at mag -0.0; and Mars will be at mag 1.7. Both objects will lie in the constellation Gemini.
They 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.
At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between Saturn and Mars 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 |
| Saturn | 06h48m40s | 22°37'N | Gemini | -0.0 | 16"9 |
| Mars | 06h49m20s | 24°12'N | Gemini | 1.7 | 4"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 36° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.
The sky on 2 Oct 2024
| The sky on 2 October 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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0% 29 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
| 07 Mar 2004 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 08 Nov 2004 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 13 Jan 2005 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 21 Mar 2005 | – 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.