The Moon and Mars will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 6°20' to the south of Mars. The Moon will be 18 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 be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 19:41, when they reach an altitude of 7° above your north-eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 02:24, 72° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 06:49, 32° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.7 in the constellation Cancer, and Mars at mag -1.0 in the neighbouring constellation of Gemini.
The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.
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 | 07h56m10s | 17°35'N | Cancer | -12.7 | 32'24"4 |
| Mars | 07h56m10s | 23°55'N | Gemini | -1.0 | 13"8 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 143° from the Sun, which is in Ophiuchus at this time of year.
The sky on 2 Sep 2024
| The sky on 2 September 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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0% 29 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
| 28 Nov 1992 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 03 Jan 1993 | – Mars at perigee |
| 07 Jan 1993 | – Mars at opposition |
| 15 Feb 1993 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.