The Moon and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 4°47' of each other. The Moon will be 23 days old.
From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 01:45, when they reach an altitude of 11° above your south-eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 06:04, 39° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 06:32, 38° above your southern horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -11.9; and Mars will be at mag 0.9. 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 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 | 13h48m40s | 14°22'S | Virgo | -11.9 | 31'45"3 |
| Mars | 13h54m10s | 9°46'S | Virgo | 0.9 | 6"6 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 85° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.
The sky on 16 Jan 2031
| The sky on 16 January 2031 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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40% 23 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.
Related news
| 05 May 2029 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
| 28 Mar 2031 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 04 May 2031 | – Mars at opposition |
| 11 May 2031 | – 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.