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 and Mars

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 2°46' of each other. The Moon will be 3 days old.

From Fairfield , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 15° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 21:25 (EDT), 15° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 34 minutes after the Sun at 23:00.

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 -10.1; and Mars will be at mag 1.8. Both objects will lie in the constellation Cancer.

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 08h16m30s 23°55'N Cancer -10.1 30'11"2
Mars 08h14m30s 21°11'N Cancer 1.8 4"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 38° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 13 Jun 2021

The sky on 13 June 2021
Sunrise
05:17
Sunset
20:26
Twilight ends
22:34
Twilight begins
03:09

3-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

13%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:21 12:36 19:50
Venus 06:46 14:22 21:57
Moon 07:46 15:37 23:22
Mars 08:15 15:37 23:00
Jupiter 00:20 05:41 11:03
Saturn 23:28 04:27 09:26
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.

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30 Nov 2022  –  Mars at perigee
08 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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Fairfield

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41.14°N
73.26°W
EDT

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