The planets Saturn and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 2°40' of each other.

From Columbus , the pair will become visible at around 21:10 (EDT), 20° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 38 minutes after the Sun at 23:06.

Saturn will be at mag 0.6; and Mars will be at mag 1.1. Both objects will lie in the constellation Virgo.

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:

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 61° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.

The sky on 17 Jul 2024

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.

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Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

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