Conjunction of the Moon and Mars

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


The Moon and Mars will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 1'56" to the south of Mars. The Moon will be 4 days old.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 18:13 (EST), 19° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 24 minutes after the Sun at 20:59.

The Moon will be at mag -11.2, and Mars at mag 0.8, both in the constellation Sagittarius.

The pair 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.

A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Mars around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
The Moon 18h40m00s 24°44'S Sagittarius -11.2 31'22"4
Mars 18h40m00s 24°42'S Sagittarius 0.8 5"8

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 59° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.

The sky on 22 Nov 2024

The sky on 22 November 2024
Sunrise
06:41
Sunset
16:16
Twilight ends
17:55
Twilight begins
05:02


Waning Crescent

45%

21 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:36 12:57 17:19
Venus 10:09 14:31 18:53
Moon 22:03 05:23 12:29
Mars 20:40 04:06 11:33
Jupiter 17:14 00:45 08:16
Saturn 13:02 18:32 00:03
All times shown in EST.

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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30 Apr 2048  –  Mars enters retrograde motion
03 Jun 2048  –  Mars at opposition
11 Jun 2048  –  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.

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