The Moon and Mars will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 37' to the south of Mars. The Moon will be 2 days old.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From Fairfield however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 12° above the horizon at dusk.
The Moon will be at mag -9.5, and Mars at mag 1.7, both in the constellation Taurus.
The pair will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably 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 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 | 05h20m00s | 23°23'N | Taurus | -9.5 | 30'42"3 |
| Mars | 05h20m00s | 24°01'N | Taurus | 1.7 | 3"8 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 27° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.
The sky on 17 Jul 2024
| The sky on 17 July 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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89% 12 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
| 19 Jul 2001 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
| 29 Jul 2003 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 27 Aug 2003 | – Mars at perigee |
| 28 Aug 2003 | – Mars at opposition |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.