Mars's orbit around the Sun will carry it to its closest point to the Earth – its perigee – passing within 0.65 AU of us.
Since the size and brightness of Mars in the night sky both increase when it is close to us, the days around its perigee represent the best time to observe it.
This effect is especially pronounced for Mars since it neighbours the Earth in the Solar System, orbiting a little further out from the Sun than us, at an average distance of 1.52 AU. As a result, it has the greatest variation of all the planets in its distance from the Earth, depending on whether the two planets are on opposite sides of the Sun, or passing next to one another in their respective orbits.
Mars reaches perigee at around the time when it passes the Earth in its orbit. At this time, the Sun, Earth and Mars lie in a straight line, with the Earth in the middle.
Consequently, Mars appears almost exactly opposite the Sun in the sky – a configuration called opposition, when Mars reaches its highest point in the sky at midnight and is visible for much of the night.
Every perigee of Mars is associated with a near-simultaneous opposition, but the two events typically occur a few days apart owing to the significant ellipticity of Mars's orbit.
On this occasion, Mars will attain a maximum angular diameter of 14.3 arcsec at closest approach, and a maximum brightness of magnitude -1.3 .
Observing Mars
Even at its closest approach to the Earth, it is never possible to distinguish Mars as more than a star-like point of light with the naked eye, though a simple pair of binoculars is sufficient to reveal it as a disk of light.
From Columbus , it will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 18:29, when it reaches an altitude of 7° above your north-eastern horizon. It will then reach its highest point in the sky at 01:08, 73° above your southern horizon. It will be lost to dawn twilight around 07:32, 10° above your western horizon.
A chart of the path of Mars across the sky in 1978 can be found here, and a chart of its rising and setting times here.
The position of Mars at the moment it passes perigee will be:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| Mars | 08h25m50s | 23°43'N | Cancer | -1.3 | 14.3" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The sky on 22 Nov 2024
| The sky on 22 November 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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47% 21 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
| 18 Jan 1978 | – Mars at perigee |
| 21 Jan 1978 | – Mars at opposition |
| 02 Mar 1978 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
| 16 Jan 1980 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
Image credit
© NASA/Hubble Space Telescope