Conjunction of Mars and Pluto

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and 134340 Pluto will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 8°49' to the south of 134340 Pluto.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 10° above the horizon at dawn.

Mars will be at mag 1.8, and 134340 Pluto at mag 15.0, both in the constellation Leo.

A graph of the angular separation between Mars 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
Mars 10h01m20s 13°22'N Leo 1.8 3"6
134340 Pluto 10h01m20s 22°12'N Leo 15.0 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 20° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.

The sky on 13 Jun 2026

The sky on 13 June 2026
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
20:03
Twilight ends
21:48
Twilight begins
03:52


Waning Crescent

2%

27 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:24 14:36 21:48
Venus 08:26 15:33 22:40
Moon 03:57 11:23 18:56
Mars 03:39 10:29 17:20
Jupiter 08:12 15:16 22:20
Saturn 02:04 08:15 14:26
All times shown in PDT.

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

11 Feb 1953  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
13 Feb 1954  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
15 Feb 1955  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
17 Feb 1956  –  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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