Home   News   Astronomy News   February 2025: Moon Meets Mars

February 2025: Moon Meets Mars

Don’t miss your chance to see Mars and the Moon meet up in the night sky this month.

A sky map illustrating the close approach of the Moon and Mars in the constellation Gemini, labeled with surrounding constellations.
A sky map illustrating the close approach of the Moon and Mars in the constellation Gemini, labeled with surrounding constellations.

The Moon and Mars will be in conjunction on February 9, 2025. The sizes of objects on our Night Sky Map are exaggerated to make it easier to see them.

©timeanddate.com

The Moon is on its way to meet up with Mars: they will have their closest approach on February 9, 2025, at 19:50 UTC.

At their nearest, they will be around 0.8° (degrees) apart—although their actual separation in the sky depends on where you are in the world.

This is one of the closest approaches between the Moon and Mars in 2025. Their closest approach of all this year will be on June 30, when the pair pass within around 0.2° of each other.*

Spot the Moon to Find Mars

The Moon will be almost Full in its Waxing Gibbous phase and very easy to find in the night sky. Look next to it, and you’ll see a rusty-colored planet—Mars. To imagine what a 0.8° separation looks like in the sky, a little finger at arm’s length is about 1°.

Seeing Mars and the Moon together is all about going outside and looking up after dark on February 9. How close together you will see the celestial objects, however, depends on where you are standing on Earth, and what time you are looking at the close approach.

What will YOU be able to see? Our Night Sky Map shows you what you can see from your location. Choose February 9 in the date picker, and search for Mars. Then use the slider to find the best time in your area.

“It’s always fascinating how these close approaches look slightly different, depending on your latitude and longitude.”

Separation Depends on Your Location

Compared to planets and stars, the Moon is relatively close to Earth. As a result, the Moon’s direction can shift by a couple of degrees when seen from different places on the Earth’s surface—an effect known as parallax.

This means that the closest approach of the Moon and Mars as seen from a particular city can be more or less than 0.8°, which is the apparent distance between the centers of the two bodies calculated for an observer at the Earth’s center.

In far northern parts of the globe, there will be a lunar occultation, meaning the Moon will appear to pass in front of Mars.

Also Depends on the Time

You need to be on the right side of Earth to see the pair at their very closest. Nighttime happens at different times depending on your position on the globe, and the Moon may have traveled a different distance in its orbit around Earth.

For example, London (in the UK) and Vancouver (Canada) are at similar latitudes (51.5°N and 49.3°N), but nighttime arrives about 8 hours later in Vancouver. During these 8 hours, the Moon and Mars have moved apart.

If you are viewing from London at 19:00 (7pm) local time on February 9, the Moon and Mars will be very close, separated by about 0.5°. But if you look from Vancouver at 19:00 (7pm) local time on the same date, they will have moved apart, and be separated by about 5.4°.

In this case, skywatchers in London can see the pair closer together than those in Vancouver because the timing favours London’s longitude, where the moment of conjunction (19:50 UTC) happens soon after the start of nighttime and the nearly-Full Moon and Mars are well placed above the horizon.

Some Won’t See It At All

“It’s always fascinating how these close approaches look slightly different, depending on your latitude and longitude,” says timeanddate.com’s Graham Jones.

“At one extreme, if you happen to be at the North Pole on February 9, the Moon and Mars will never set. They will make one full circuit around the sky in 24 hours, but never go below the horizon.

“At the other extreme, people at the South Pole have no chance of seeing this close approach, because the Moon and Mars never come into view above the horizon.”

Conjunction vs. Close Approach

Astronomers have several systems for giving the positions of objects in the sky, similar to how positions on Earth can be understood through longitude (an east-west coordinate) and latitude (a north-south coordinate). One of these is the equatorial coordinate system, where the east-west coordinate is called right ascension.

When two objects have the same right ascension, they are said to be in conjunction. For the Moon and Mars, this will happen at 19:35 UTC on February 9, 2025.

The moment of conjunction is roughly the same as the moment of closest approach, although there can be a small difference between the two times. A close approach—also known as an appulse—is a general term for when celestial bodies appear close to each other in the sky.

*We calculate our planetary data using a mathematical model of the solar system developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.