Mercury and Mars will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 1°06' to the north of Mars.
From Cambridge however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 12° from it.
Mercury will be at mag -1.2, and Mars at mag 1.6, both in the constellation Taurus.
The pair 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.
A graph of the angular separation between Mercury 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 |
| Mercury | 04h37m20s | 23°45'N | Taurus | -1.2 | 5"5 |
| Mars | 04h37m20s | 22°38'N | Taurus | 1.6 | 3"7 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 12° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.
The sky on 18 May 2024
| The sky on 18 May 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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80% 10 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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Warning
Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.
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 |
| 11 May 2001 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 13 Jun 2001 | – Mars at opposition |
| 21 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.