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

Close approach of the Moon, Mars and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon, Mars and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within 4°38' of each other. The Moon will be 8 days old.

From San Diego , the trio will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:39 (PDT), 71° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 17:58, 72° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 23:46, when they sink below 10° above your western horizon.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

The Moon will be at mag -11.9; Mars will be at mag 0.2; and Uranus will be at mag 5.8. The trio will lie in the constellation Aries.

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 trio 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 trio at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
The Moon 02h23m20s 10°35'N Aries -11.9 29'32"2
Mars 02h15m50s 14°52'N Aries 0.2 8"5
Uranus 02h17m00s 13°15'N Aries 5.8 3"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The trio will be at an angular separation of 95° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 21 Jan 2021

The sky on 21 January 2021
Sunrise
06:47
Sunset
17:10
Twilight ends
18:36
Twilight begins
05:21

8-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

59%

8 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:51 13:13 18:35
Venus 05:52 10:53 15:54
Moon 11:51 18:36 01:28
Mars 11:16 17:58 00:41
Jupiter 07:10 12:22 17:34
Saturn 06:58 12:07 17:17
All times shown in PST.

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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30 Oct 2022  –  Mars enters retrograde motion
30 Nov 2022  –  Mars at perigee
07 Dec 2022  –  Mars at opposition

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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San Diego

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32.72°N
117.16°W
PDT

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