The planets Jupiter and Mars will make a close approach, passing within a mere 12.1 arcminutes of each other.
From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 02:39 (EST) and reaching an altitude of 28° above the southern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:23.
Jupiter will be at mag -1.9; and Mars will be at mag 1.4. Both objects will lie in the constellation Libra.
They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also 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 Jupiter 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 |
| Jupiter | 15h02m00s | 16°04'S | Libra | -1.9 | 32"8 |
| Mars | 15h01m40s | 16°16'S | Libra | 1.4 | 4"9 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 58° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.
The sky on 6 Jan 2018
| The sky on 6 January 2018 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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64% 19 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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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.
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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.