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 7°06' of each other. The Moon will be 12 days old.

From Jacksonville , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 20:17 (EST), 44° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 22:54, 63° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 04:24, when they sink below 8° above your western horizon.

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 -12.6 in Leo; and Mars will be at mag -0.8 in Virgo.

They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.

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 11h34m00s 2°36'S Leo -12.6 33'01"3
Mars 11h45m40s 3°52'N Virgo -0.8 13"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 139° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 25 Apr 2029

The sky on 25 April 2029
Sunrise
06:46
Sunset
19:59
Twilight ends
21:26
Twilight begins
05:20

12-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

91%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:39 14:35 21:32
Venus 07:16 13:56 20:36
Moon 17:12 23:11 05:02
Mars 16:42 22:54 05:06
Jupiter 18:43 00:30 06:17
Saturn 07:19 13:55 20:30
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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28 Mar 2031  –  Mars enters retrograde motion
04 May 2031  –  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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Jacksonville

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30.33°N
81.66°W
EST

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