The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Close approach of Venus and Mars

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The planets Venus and Mars will make a close approach, passing within a mere 29.1 arcminutes of each other.

From Ashburn , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 14° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 18:33 (EDT), 14° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 1 minute after the Sun at 19:54.

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Venus will be at mag -3.9; and Mars will be at mag 1.2. Both objects will lie in the constellation Pisces.

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 pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.

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

The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 23h46m50s 2°41'S Pisces -3.9 11"2
Mars 23h46m00s 2°15'S Pisces 1.2 4"1

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 25° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 29 Mar 2024

The sky on 29 March 2024
Sunrise
06:56
Sunset
19:30
Twilight ends
21:01
Twilight begins
05:25

19-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

81%

19 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:25 14:12 20:58
Venus 06:23 12:11 17:59
Moon 23:04 04:01 08:52
Mars 05:41 11:08 16:35
Jupiter 08:39 15:36 22:33
Saturn 06:03 11:39 17:15
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

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.

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Ashburn

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39.04°N
77.49°W
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