Mars And Moon Will Be Visible Together On May 14! Here's Where, When And How To Look For Them

The night and the early morning sky has been offering some treats to the star-gazers lately, and an escape to people stuck in home during lockdown. Given how clear spring skies are because of lack of pollution many constellations, meteor showers, planet alignments are visible to the naked eye.

The best part about stargazing these days is that it requires no binoculars or telescopes for people to look at some rare events. A cloudless sky, lack of artificial lights and some patience is all one needs to be able to spot the most amazing events taking place in space.

Representative Image/USRA

Early morning of May 12, Jupiter was visible in sky with the moon.

Now with changing positions, at daybreak on May 14, the moon near its last quarter phase and will be seen in conjunction with the red planet, Mars. In the sky the moon and Mars will appear fairly close together. However, in space they are not really particularly close. The last quarter moon will be about 247,000 miles (nearly 398,000 km) away from Earth, whereas Mars lies way beyond the moon, at about 425 times the moon¡¯s distance.

NASA

To watch moon and Mars together you will not have to wait for the night but actually get up early on the morning of May 14 (an hour or more before sunrise) to view Mars in the predawn/dawn sky. You have to look towards the southeast to spot the planet. If you cannot figure out the direction you can simply take help of compass app on your device.

These days Mars is decently bright. Excluding the sun, Mars is actually the 8th brightest object in our night sky these days, according to Earth Sky. But Mars is not even close to Jupiter in brightness which is currently the 4th-brightest celestial body, after the sun, moon and the planet Venus, respectively. It outshines Mars by 12 times!

Reddit

Given the opportunity to be able to clearly look at these astronomical sights, one should step out and appreciate nature. Sleep a little early on May 13 so that you can wake up early to watch the moon and the Mars chilling together, especially if you missed the moon hanging out with Jupiter. Rapidly changing positions of planets and the moon will soon put a halt to these hang out sessions and then you can get all the sleep you want!