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 8°37' 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 21° from it.

Mercury will be at mag -0.9, and 134340 Pluto at mag 15.2, 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 09h52m30s 13°49'N Leo -0.9 6"3
134340 Pluto 09h52m30s 22°27'N Leo 15.2 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 Leo at this time of year.

The sky on 10 Sep 2025

The sky on 10 September 2025
Sunrise
06:29
Sunset
19:05
Twilight ends
20:30
Twilight begins
05:04


Waning Gibbous

81%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:18 12:41 19:03
Venus 04:11 10:58 17:45
Moon 20:18 02:55 09:42
Mars 09:13 14:52 20:32
Jupiter 01:48 08:55 16:02
Saturn 19:38 01:33 07:29
All times shown in PDT.

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

09 Feb 1952  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
10 Feb 1953  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
12 Feb 1954  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
14 Feb 1955  –  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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