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

Close approach of Jupiter and Mars

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The planets Jupiter and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 1°37' of each other.

From Ashburn , the pair will become visible at around 21:10 (EDT), 31° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 40 minutes after the Sun at 00:12.

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Jupiter will be at mag -2.0; and Mars will be at mag 0.6. Both objects will lie in the constellation Virgo.

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.

At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.

A graph of the angular separation between Jupiter 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
Jupiter 13h11m40s 6°16'S Virgo -2.0 35"1
Mars 13h09m00s 7°46'S Virgo 0.6 7"2

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 82° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.

The sky on 19 Jul 2029

The sky on 19 July 2029
Sunrise
05:56
Sunset
20:32
Twilight ends
22:24
Twilight begins
04:03

8-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

67%

8 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:49 14:01 21:13
Venus 08:29 15:18 22:08
Moon 15:01 20:06 01:05
Mars 12:49 18:27 00:04
Jupiter 12:47 18:29 00:12
Saturn 01:44 08:42 15:40
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

13 Jun 2029  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
13 Mar 2030  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
13 May 2030  –  Jupiter at opposition
14 Jul 2030  –  Jupiter 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.

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Ashburn

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39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

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