The Moon and Mars will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 0°12' to the north of Mars. The Moon will be 9 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 become visible around 20:50 (EST) as the dusk sky fades, 35° above your south-western horizon. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 00:49.
The Moon will be at mag -11.9, and Mars at mag 0.1, both in the constellation Virgo.
The pair 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.
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 | 13h13m50s | -08°14' | Virgo | -11.9 | 30'30"7 |
| Mars | 13h13m50s | -08°27' | Virgo | 0.1 | 9"1 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 96° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.
| The sky on 05 July 2014 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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55% 8 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
| 14 Apr 2014 | – Mars at perigee |
| 12 Dec 2014 | – Mars at perihelion |
| 14 Jun 2015 | – Mars at solar conjunction |
| 11 Jul 2015 | – Mars at apogee |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.