The Moon, Mars and M44 will make a close approach, passing within a mere 26.6 arcminutes of each other. The Moon will be 25 days old.
From Fairfield , the trio will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 02:08 (EDT) and reaching an altitude of 41° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:57.
The Moon will be at mag -10.9; Mars will be at mag 1.6; and M44 will be at mag 3.1. The trio will lie in the constellation Cancer.
They 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.
At around the same time, the trio 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 trio at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 08h39m50s | 19°02'N | Cancer | -10.9 | 31'22"9 |
| Mars | 08h40m00s | 19°28'N | Cancer | 1.6 | 4"3 |
| M44 | 08h40m20s | 19°40'N | Cancer | 3.1 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 53° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.
The sky on 23 Apr 2024
| The sky on 23 April 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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99% 15 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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.
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.