The planets Mars and Saturn will make a close approach, passing within 4°21' of each other.
From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 20:03 (EST), 25° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 23:47.
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 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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50% 22 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.
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| 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.