Saturn and Mars will share the same right ascension, with Saturn passing 19' to the north of Mars.
At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.
From Fairfield , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 12° above the horizon. They will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 04:31 (EST) – 1 hour and 58 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 12° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:50.
Saturn will be at mag 0.7, and Mars at mag 1.0, both in the constellation Capricornus.
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 Saturn 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 |
| Saturn | 21h39m00s | 15°02'S | Capricornus | 0.7 | 15"8 |
| Mars | 21h39m00s | 15°22'S | Capricornus | 1.0 | 5"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 52° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.
The sky on 4 Apr 2022
| The sky on 4 April 2022 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
16% 3 days old |
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.
Related news
| 10 Oct 2021 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 04 Jun 2022 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 14 Aug 2022 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 22 Oct 2022 | – 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.