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

Conjunction of the Moon and Mars

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed

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The sky at

The Moon and Mars will share the same right ascension, with the Moon passing 21' to the south of Mars. The Moon will be 11 days old.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From Fairfield , the pair will become visible at around 20:52 (EST), 33° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 01:38.

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 -12.3, and Mars at mag -0.8, both in the constellation Virgo.

The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.

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 14h11m40s 15°14'S Virgo -12.3 31'54"6
Mars 14h11m40s 14°53'S Virgo -0.8 13"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 118° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.

The sky on 30 Jun 2031

The sky on 30 June 2031
Sunrise
05:20
Sunset
20:29
Twilight ends
22:36
Twilight begins
03:12

11-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

78%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:04 14:28 21:53
Venus 08:47 15:46 22:44
Moon 16:09 21:12 02:11
Mars 15:20 20:29 01:39
Jupiter 19:03 23:41 04:18
Saturn 03:53 11:16 18:39
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 2031  –  Mars ends retrograde motion
26 May 2033  –  Mars enters retrograde motion
27 Jun 2033  –  Mars at opposition
05 Jul 2033  –  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.

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Fairfield

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41.14°N
73.26°W
EST

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