The Moon and Mars will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 7°05' to the south of Mars. The Moon will be 26 days old.
From Columbus , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 03:50 (EST) – 3 hours and 58 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 35° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 07:02.
The Moon will be at mag -10.6, and Mars at mag 1.7, both in the constellation Leo.
The pair 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.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Mars around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 10h57m30s | 1°05'N | Leo | -10.6 | 31'29"5 |
| Mars | 10h57m30s | 8°11'N | Leo | 1.7 | 4"3 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 44° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.
The sky on 23 Oct 2030
| The sky on 23 October 2030 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
10% 26 days old |
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
| 05 May 2029 | – Mars ends retrograde motion |
| 28 Mar 2031 | – Mars enters retrograde motion |
| 04 May 2031 | – Mars at opposition |
| 11 May 2031 | – Mars at perigee |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.