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 9°08' to the south of 134340 Pluto.

From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 02:09 (EDT) and reaching an altitude of 29° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:38.

Mars will be at mag 1.1 in the constellation Ophiuchus, and 134340 Pluto at mag 14.6 in the neighbouring constellation of Serpens Cauda.

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 17h18m10s 22°56'S Ophiuchus 1.1 5"7
134340 Pluto 17h18m10s 13°47'S Serpens Cauda 14.6 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 68° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 13 May 2025

The sky on 13 May 2025
Sunrise
05:34
Sunset
20:02
Twilight ends
21:55
Twilight begins
03:41


Waning Gibbous

99%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:57 11:40 18:23
Venus 03:46 09:58 16:11
Moon 20:32 01:06 05:34
Mars 11:08 18:22 01:36
Jupiter 07:27 14:58 22:29
Saturn 03:30 09:25 15:19
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

07 Jun 2002  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
09 Jun 2003  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
11 Jun 2004  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
14 Jun 2005  –  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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