The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Close approach of Mars and Saturn

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The planets Mars and Saturn will make a close approach, passing within 4°21' of each other.

From Ashburn , the pair will become visible at around 20:22 (EDT), 29° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 00:21.

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Mars will be at mag -0.4; and Saturn will be at mag 0.2. Both objects will lie in the constellation Ophiuchus.

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 Mars and Saturn 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
Mars 16h30m30s 24°39'S Ophiuchus -0.4 10"9
Saturn 16h32m50s 20°20'S Ophiuchus 0.2 16"8

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 98° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.

The sky on 24 Aug 2016

The sky on 24 August 2016
Sunrise
06:29
Sunset
19:52
Twilight ends
21:28
Twilight begins
04:52

22-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

50%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:44 14:40 20:37
Venus 08:17 14:32 20:48
Moon 23:22 06:20 13:24
Mars 14:49 19:25 00:01
Jupiter 08:33 14:44 20:55
Saturn 14:34 19:28 00:21
All times shown in EDT.

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

13 Aug 2016  –  Saturn ends retrograde motion
06 Apr 2017  –  Saturn enters retrograde motion
15 Jun 2017  –  Saturn at opposition
25 Aug 2017  –  Saturn 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.

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Ashburn

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Longitude:
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39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

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