The planets Venus and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 3°33' of each other.
From Columbus , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 16° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 22:00 (EST), 16° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 30 minutes after the Sun at 23:34.
Venus will be at mag -4.5; and Mars will be at mag 1.7. Both objects will lie in the constellation Leo.
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.
A graph of the angular separation between Venus 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 |
| Venus | 09h32m40s | 14°59'N | Leo | -4.5 | 33"6 |
| Mars | 09h47m20s | 14°36'N | Leo | 1.7 | 4"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 41° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.
The sky on 1 Jul 2023
| The sky on 1 July 2023 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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95% 13 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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Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.