Planets fading into the sunset

The evening sky has been graced by the sight of Saturn and Mars over the previous months and as the two slowly fade into the glare of sunset they are making one last beautiful show with the Moon and with each other. On July 5th and 6th Mars and Saturn create a beautiful group next to the crescent Moon and they slowly move closer to each other until Thursday July 10th when they are separated by a mere 0.7 degrees, slightly more than width of a full Moon. Mars, being much closer to Earth than Saturn, appears to move a small amount to the east each evening and has been gradually drawing closer to Saturn. It's quite a finale to see these two worlds so close to each other from our point of view. By month's end they will be nearly out of sight.