The Moon and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 6°24' of each other. The Moon will be 9 days old.
From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 20:53 (EDT), 48° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 01:44.
The Moon will be at mag -12.0; and Mars will be at mag 0.5. Both objects will lie in the constellation Leo.
They 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.
At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon 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 |
| The Moon | 10h51m20s | 1°36'N | Leo | -12.0 | 31'38"5 |
| Mars | 11h00m50s | 7°34'N | Leo | 0.5 | 8"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 95° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.
The sky on 1 May 2024
| The sky on 1 May 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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43% 23 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
| 13 Apr 2012 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
| 01 Mar 2014 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 08 Apr 2014 | – Mars at opposition |
| 14 Apr 2014 | – 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.