The Moon, Mars and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within 4°22' of each other. The Moon will be 5 days old.
From Cambridge , the trio will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 15° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 19:21 (EDT), 15° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 32 minutes after the Sun at 21:15.
The Moon will be at mag -11.2; Mars will be at mag 0.9; and Uranus will be at mag 5.6. The trio will lie in the constellation Scorpius.
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 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 | 16h03m40s | 17°37'S | Scorpius | -11.2 | 29'59"6 |
| Mars | 15h58m40s | 21°50'S | Scorpius | 0.9 | 5"8 |
| Uranus | 15h58m10s | 20°21'S | Scorpius | 5.6 | 3"6 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 62° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.
The sky on 26 Apr 2024
| The sky on 26 April 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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88% 18 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.
Related news
| 11 May 1982 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
| 05 Apr 1984 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 11 May 1984 | – Mars at opposition |
| 19 May 1984 | – 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.