Conjunction of Venus and Pluto

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and 134340 Pluto will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 3°17' to the south of 134340 Pluto.

From Cambridge however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 17° from it.

Venus will be at mag -3.9, and 134340 Pluto at mag 14.8, both in the constellation Sagittarius.

The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Venus 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
Venus 18h41m20s 23°04'S Sagittarius -3.9 10"4
134340 Pluto 18h41m20s 19°47'S Sagittarius 14.8 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 17° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 11 May 2025

The sky on 11 May 2025
Sunrise
05:24
Sunset
19:54
Twilight ends
21:50
Twilight begins
03:29


Waxing Gibbous

99%

14 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:47 11:26 18:06
Venus 03:40 09:51 16:03
Moon 18:18 --:-- 04:28
Mars 10:59 18:17 01:36
Jupiter 07:20 14:55 22:30
Saturn 03:29 09:23 15:18
All times shown in EDT.

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 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

29 Jun 2012  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
01 Jul 2013  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
04 Jul 2014  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
06 Jul 2015  –  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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