The Moon and Mars will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 45' to the south of Mars. The Moon will be 5 days old.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From Fairfield , the pair will become visible at around 18:04 (EDT), 53° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 23:07.
The Moon will be at mag -11.5, and Mars at mag 1.0, both in the constellation Aries.
The pair will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably 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 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 | 02h09m10s | 13°00'N | Aries | -11.5 | 32'23"0 |
| Mars | 02h09m10s | 13°46'N | Aries | 1.0 | 5"9 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 67° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.
The sky on 23 Jul 2024
| The sky on 23 July 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
92% 18 days old |
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.
Related news
| 13 Sep 2050 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
| 22 Sep 2052 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 20 Oct 2052 | – Mars at perigee |
| 28 Oct 2052 | – Mars at opposition |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.