© NASA/Hubble Space Telescope

Mars at perihelion

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Outer Planets feed

Objects: Mars
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The sky at

Mars's 687-day orbit around the Sun will carry it to its closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 1.38 AU.

Unlike most of the planets, which follow almost exactly circular orbits around the Sun which only vary in their distance from the Sun by a few percent, Mars has a significantly elliptical orbit. Its distance from the Sun varies between 1.38 AU and 1.67 AU – a variation of over 20% – meaning that it receives 31% less heat and light from the Sun at aphelion as compared to perihelion.

Finding Mars

Mars's distance from the Sun doesn't affect its appearance. From Fairfield, at the moment of perihelion it will not be readily observable since it will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 8° from it.

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

A chart of the path of Mars across the sky in 2028 can be found here, and a chart of its rising and setting times here.

The position of Mars at the moment it passes perihelion will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Mars 22h10m40s 12°21'S Aquarius 1.1 4.0"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 11 Feb 2028

The sky on 11 February 2028
Sunrise
06:51
Sunset
17:20
Twilight ends
18:53
Twilight begins
05:18

16-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

97%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:47 10:50 15:54
Venus 08:35 14:44 20:53
Moon 17:40 00:35 07:15
Mars 07:19 12:39 17:58
Jupiter 20:02 02:15 08:29
Saturn 09:28 15:55 22:21
All times shown in EST.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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

01 Apr 2027  –  Mars ends retrograde motion
14 Feb 2029  –  Mars enters retrograde motion
25 Mar 2029  –  Mars at opposition
29 Mar 2029  –  Mars at perigee

Image credit

© NASA/Hubble Space Telescope

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