Venus and Mars will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 13' to the north of Mars.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From Cambridge 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 dawn.
Venus will be at mag -3.9, and Mars at mag 1.8, both in the constellation Leo.
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 Venus 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 |
| Venus | 11h20m50s | 5°41'N | Leo | -3.9 | 11"0 |
| Mars | 11h20m50s | 5°28'N | Leo | 1.8 | 3"6 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 23° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.
The sky on 5 Oct 2017
| The sky on 5 October 2017 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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99% 15 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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| 27 Jul 2018 | – Mars at opposition |
| 31 Jul 2018 | – 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.