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 a mere 19.0 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Mars, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 8 days old.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 19:30 (EST), 73° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 19:32, 73° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 02:07, when they sink below 10° above your north-western horizon.

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The Moon will be at mag -12.0; and Mars will be at mag 0.5. Both objects will lie in the constellation Gemini.

They 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.

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 06h48m30s 25°55'N Gemini -12.0 29'32"6
Mars 06h48m30s 25°36'N Gemini 0.5 8"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 99° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 21 Nov 2024

The sky on 21 November 2024
Sunrise
06:40
Sunset
16:16
Twilight ends
17:55
Twilight begins
05:01

20-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

57%

20 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:38 12:59 17:20
Venus 10:08 14:29 18:51
Moon 20:55 04:36 12:04
Mars 20:43 04:09 11:36
Jupiter 17:18 00:49 08:20
Saturn 13:06 18:36 00:07
All times shown in EST.

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 Dec 2041  –  Mars enters retrograde motion
05 Feb 2042  –  Mars at perigee
06 Feb 2042  –  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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Cambridge

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42.38°N
71.11°W
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