Close approach of Jupiter and Mars

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Appulses feed

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The planets Jupiter and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 4°17' of each other.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 19:32 (EST), 54° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 21:26, 64° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 03:37, when they sink below 9° above your western horizon.

Jupiter will be at mag -2.4 in Cancer; and Mars will be at mag -0.4 in Leo.

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.

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 09h18m30s 16°46'N Cancer -2.4 41"0
Mars 09h36m00s 17°43'N Leo -0.4 11"2

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 126° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 31 Mar 2027

The sky on 31 March 2027
Sunrise
06:27
Sunset
19:08
Twilight ends
20:44
Twilight begins
04:50


Waning Crescent

34%

23 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:47 11:23 16:59
Venus 05:16 10:42 16:07
Moon 03:34 08:03 12:38
Mars 14:32 21:43 04:54
Jupiter 14:18 21:26 04:33
Saturn 06:53 13:12 19:32
All times shown in EDT.

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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