Mars is a terrestrial planet located fourth from the Sun in the Inner Solar System. It has a diameter of 6,779 kilometers and a mass of 6.39 x 10^23 kilograms, making it roughly half the size of Earth. Mars is a rocky planet with a thin atmosphere primarily composed of carbon dioxide, with trace amounts of nitrogen and argon. The planet's surface is characterized by volcanoes, canyons, and impact craters, including Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system. Mars has a day length that is similar to Earth's, with a rotation period of 24.6 hours, and it orbits the Sun once every 687 Earth days. The planet has two small, irregularly shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos. Mars has been the subject of extensive exploration by spacecraft, including NASA's Viking missions in the 1970s and more recent rovers such as Curiosity and Perseverance. The search for evidence of past or present life on Mars remains an important goal of space exploration.
Mars Position Calculator
Compute the position of Mars for any date and time between 1 January 1600
and 30 December 2499
and visualize the results on an interactive sky map.
Mars is in the constellation of
Cancer,
at a distance of 229,408,441.0 kilometers from Earth.
The current Right Ascension is
08h 57m 39s
and the Declination is +19° 02’ 29”
(apparent coordinates).
The magnitude of Mars is 1.10 (data provided by JPL Horizons).
Check out tonight's visibility information for Mars.
High precision deep sky finder chart, 60 arcmin wide, showing where Mars is right now.
Click on the image to see a more detailed fullscreen tracker view.
Given its current magnitude, Mars is visible to the naked eye, easy and bright under dark skies, might be more difficult from heavily light polluted areas.
If you need to access this information frequently for your observations, you can create a simple
customized Quick Access page,
so that you can easily bookmark it in your browser favorites or add a shortcut to your mobile phones' home screen.
Distance from Earth
The distance of Mars from Earth is currently 229,408,441.0 kilometers,
equivalent to 1.5335007104Astronomical Units.
Light takes
12m 45.224s to travel from Mars and arrive to us.
229,408,441.0
1.5335007104
12m 45.224s
The following chart shows the distance of Mars from Earth as a function of time.
In the chart the distance data is measured in Astronomical Units and sampled with
an interval of 1 day.
Chart of the distance of Mars from Earth in Astronomical Units (au)
The value of the reported distance might be somewhat inaccurate around the times of closest approach for objects passing extremely close to Earth.
The value of the distance of Mars from Earth is also available as a real time updated value in the
Live Position and Data Tracker.
Closest Approach
Between 1 January 1600 and 30 December 2499,
the closest approach of
Mars to Earth happens on
Mon Aug 29 2287 at a distance of
0.372254 Astronomical Units, or
55,688,458 kilometers:
Mon Aug 29 2287
55,688,458
0.372254
NOTE: values for the closest approach are computed
with a sampling interval of 1 day.
Light Curve
The following chart is the predicted light curve
(visual magnitude as a function of time) of Mars,
according to the most recent ephemerides data.
Magnitude data is sampled with a 2 days interval and there might be inaccuracies
for objects changing brightness very rapidly during the course of a few days. For comets there could be large discrepancies
between the observed and predicted brightness because of their highly dynamic behaviour.
Chart of the magnitude of Mars as a function of time
Physical Data
The following shows the known values of the most important physical parameters of Mars.
Source: JPL Small-Body Database
Physical Parameter
Value
Relative to Earth
Diameter
6779 km
0.5320
Mass
0.641693 x 1024 kg
0.1074
Density
3.934 gr/cm3
0.7135
Escape Velocity
5.03 km/s
0.4495
Sideral Rotation
24.6230 hours
1.0288
Absolute Magnitude
-1.52
Geometric Albedo
0.15
15 Days Ephemeris
The following table lists the ephemerides of Mars computed for the past and next 7 days, with a 24 hours interval.
Apparent celestial coordinates are provided.