Mars and Jupiter presently lie inside a binocular field-of-view, although you’ll have to rise early to catch them mendacity round 20° excessive at about 3am BST. Each planets are hosted by the intense stars of the constellation of Taurus, the Bull, which offer a suitably gorgeous backdrop main as much as and through shut method.
Mars lies west of Jupiter, mendacity round 5° above orange-red Aldebaran (alpha Tauri) on the morning of seven August. Aldebaran, marking the Bull’s proper eye, dominates the acquainted and vivid ‘V’ form define of the Hyades open cluster, although its not a member of the cluster. As likelihood would have it, each Mars and Aldebaran shine at round magnitude +0.9, and with an identical coloration. Jupiter dazzles at magnitude – 2.2, completely dominating the morning scene.
Over the course of the subsequent week, Mars’ extra fast easterly movement via Taurus attracts the purple planet ever nearer to Jupiter. The planetary pair lie inside 1.3° of one another between the mornings of twelfth to seventeenth August. Closest method happens on 15 August at 16:52 UT, daytime within the UK, when Mars lies 18’ north-west of Jupiter.
Shut planetary conjunctions aren’t all that frequent and are very thrilling to see. It’s not that way back that we witnessed the so-called ‘Christmas Star Conjunction’ of 21 December 2020, when Jupiter and Saturn hadn’t been as shut within the evening sky for nearly 400 years. This kind of occasion usually get the eye of the mass media, like a vivid comet or vibrant aurora. So, it’ll be well-worth attempting to watch and picture the conjunction.
From UK shores, there’s two alternatives to see Mars and Jupiter at their closest. The mornings of 13/14 and 14/15 August see Mars slides previous Jupiter, when the purple planet seems to lie 23’ above and 23’ to the left of Jupiter, respectively, a distance a good bit lower than the diameter of a full Moon. That is the closest that Mars and Jupiter have been since they had been round 13’ aside within the pre-dawn sky on 7 January 2018.
