© NASA/Hubble Space Telescope

136472 Makemake at solar conjunction

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Dwarf Planets feed

Please wait
Loading 0/4
Click and drag to rotate
Mouse wheel to zoom in/out
Touch with mouse to dismiss
The sky at

136472 Makemake will pass close to the Sun in the sky as its orbit carries it around the far side of the solar system from the Earth.

At closest approach, 136472 Makemake will appear at a separation of only 27° from the Sun, making it totally unobservable for several weeks while it is lost in the Sun's glare.

At around the same time, 136472 Makemake will also be at its most distant from the Earth – receding to a distance of 53.47 AU – since the two planets will lie on opposite sides of the solar system.

Over following weeks and months, 136472 Makemake will re-emerge to the west of the Sun, gradually becoming visible for ever-longer periods in the pre-dawn sky. After around six months, it will reach opposition, when it will be visible for virtually the whole night. A chart of the path of 136472 Makemake across the sky in 2020 can be found here, and a chart of its rising and setting times here.

The position of 136472 Makemake at the moment it passes solar conjunction will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
136472 Makemake 13h09m00s 22°35'N Coma Berenices 0.0"
Sun 12h23m 2°31'S Virgo 31'56"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 29 Sep 2020

The sky on 29 September 2020
Sunrise
06:45
Sunset
18:37
Twilight ends
20:09
Twilight begins
05:13

12-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

96%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 09:03 14:13 19:23
Venus 03:21 10:11 17:00
Moon 18:06 23:39 05:20
Mars 19:32 01:57 08:22
Jupiter 14:54 19:32 00:10
Saturn 15:21 20:04 00:47
All times shown in EDT.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.

Related news

26 Mar 2020  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
27 Mar 2021  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
28 Mar 2022  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
29 Mar 2023  –  136472 Makemake at opposition

Image credit

© NASA/Hubble Space Telescope

Share

Fairfield

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

41.14°N
73.26°W
EDT

Color scheme