Jun 27, 2018
Image: Mars - NASA/Hubble Space Telescope
Mars, the Roman god of war named the red planet. According to this article from the Outer Planets feed, we find its position tonight will make it highly visible from planet earth. This event is visible to the naked eye from New York City, NY and many other towns and cities in the United States.
Today Mars will be well placed for observation, in the constellation Capricornus. It will be visible for much of the night, reaching its highest point in the sky at around midnight local time.
From New York City, NY it will be visible between 22:38 and 05:24. It will become accessible at around 22:38, when it rises 7° above the south-eastern horizon, and then reach its highest point in the sky at 02:03, 22° above the southern horizon. It will become inaccessible at around 05:24 when it sinks to 8° above the south-western horizon.
Mars opposite the Sun
This optimal positioning occurs when Mars is almost directly opposite the Sun in the sky. Since the Sun reaches its greatest distance below the horizon at midnight, the point opposite to it is highest in the sky at the same time.
At around the same time that Mars passes opposition, it also makes its closest approach to the Earth – termed its perigee – making it appear at its brightest and largest.
This happens because when Mars lies opposite the Sun in the sky, the solar system is lined up so that Mars, the Earth and the Sun form a straight line with the Earth in the middle, on the same side of the Sun as Mars.
The time of Mars's perigee is an especially good time to observe it, since it neighbors the Earth in the solar system and has the greatest variation of all of the planets in its distance from the Earth. This in turn leads to a large variation in its apparent size and brightness.
Mars's distance from the Earth can vary between 0.36 AU and 2.68 AU, meaning that its disk varies in diameter between 25.68" and 3.49".
When it passes opposition, Mars glides past the Earth rather quickly, and so only appears large and bright in the sky for a few weeks. A graph of the angular size of Mars at this opposition is available here, and a graph of its brightness is available here.
On this occasion, Mars will lie at a distance of 0.39 AU, and its disk will measure 24.3 arcsec in diameter, shining at magnitude -2.8. Even at its closest approach to the Earth, however, it is not possible to distinguish it as more than a star-like point of light without the aid of a telescope.
Mars in coming weeks
Over the weeks following its opposition, Mars will reach its highest point in the sky four minutes earlier each night, gradually receding from the pre-dawn morning sky while remaining visible in the evening sky for a few months.
A chart of Mars rising and setting times in 2018 can be found here.
The position of Mars at the moment it passes opposition will be:
Object
Right Ascension
Declination
Constellation
Magnitude
Angular Size
Mars
20h31m30s
-25°33'
Capricornus
-2.8
24.3"
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
THE SKY ON 27 JULY 2018
Sunrise: 05:38
Sunset: 20:14
Twilight ends: 22:12
Twilight begins: 03:41
Waxing Gibbous: 99% - 14 days old
Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:25 15:06 21:46
Venus 10:30 16:50 23:10
Moon 21:21 01:27 06:14
Mars 21:37 02:03 06:25
Jupiter 15:06 20:14 01:25
Saturn 19:07 23:43 04:23
All times shown in EDT.
Source: The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE405 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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