The Moon and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 1°48' of each other. The Moon will be 4 days old.
From Kuala Lumpur , the pair will become visible at around 19:52 (GMT+08), 35° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 2 minutes after the Sun at 22:22.
The Moon will be at mag -10.6; and Mars will be at mag 1.1. Both objects will lie in the constellation Aquarius.
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 pair 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 pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 22h31m30s | 12°13'S | Aquarius | -10.6 | 30'16"7 |
| Mars | 22h29m30s | 10°29'S | Aquarius | 1.1 | 4"9 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 45° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.
The sky on 18 May 2024
| The sky on 18 May 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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81% 10 days old |
All times shown in GMT+08.
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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
| 04 Jun 1999 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
| 12 May 2001 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 14 Jun 2001 | – Mars at opposition |
| 22 Jun 2001 | – 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.