Conjunction of Mercury and Pluto

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mercury and 134340 Pluto will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 7°02' to the south of 134340 Pluto.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 16° from it.

Mercury will be at mag -0.6, and 134340 Pluto at mag 15.0, both in the constellation Leo.

A graph of the angular separation between Mercury and 134340 Pluto around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Mercury 09h34m00s 16°00'N Leo -0.6 5"3
134340 Pluto 09h34m00s 23°02'N Leo 15.0 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 16° from the Sun, which is in Cancer at this time of year.

The sky on 19 Jun 2026

The sky on 19 June 2026
Sunrise
05:38
Sunset
20:05
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:53


Waxing Crescent

30%

5 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:29 14:35 21:41
Venus 08:37 15:39 22:40
Moon 10:48 17:26 23:55
Mars 03:29 10:23 17:18
Jupiter 07:54 14:57 22:01
Saturn 01:42 07:53 14:04
All times shown in PDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE440 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

06 Feb 1950  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
08 Feb 1951  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
10 Feb 1952  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
11 Feb 1953  –  134340 Pluto at opposition

Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

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