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

Close approach of Venus and Mars

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The planets Venus and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 3°33' of each other.

From Cambridge , the pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 14° above the horizon. They will become visible at around 21:24 (EDT), 14° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 26 minutes after the Sun at 22:51.

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

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
Sunrise
05:08
Sunset
20:25
Twilight ends
22:38
Twilight begins
02:54

13-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

95%

13 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:08 12:49 20:31
Venus 08:40 15:39 22:38
Moon 19:03 23:24 03:43
Mars 08:56 15:54 22:52
Jupiter 01:41 08:35 15:29
Saturn 23:20 04:44 10:08
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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15 Jan 2025  –  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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Cambridge

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Longitude:
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42.38°N
71.11°W
EDT

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