The Moon and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 4°18' of each other. The Moon will be 23 days old.
From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 02:11 (EST) and reaching an altitude of 25° above the southern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:05.
The Moon will be at mag -11.4; and Mars will be at mag 1.1. 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 the Moon and Mars 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 |
| The Moon | 16h29m30s | 16°53'S | Ophiuchus | -11.4 | 29'39"2 |
| Mars | 16h26m00s | 21°07'S | Ophiuchus | 1.1 | 5"8 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 71° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.
The sky on 9 Feb 2018
| The sky on 9 February 2018 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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30% 23 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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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
| 29 Jun 2016 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
| 26 Jun 2018 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 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.