Conjunction of Jupiter and Pluto

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Jupiter and 134340 Pluto will share the same right ascension, with Jupiter passing 41' to the north of 134340 Pluto.

From Columbus , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 00:51, when they reach an altitude of 21° above your south-eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 02:48, 27° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 04:41, 22° above your south-western horizon.

Jupiter will be at mag -2.7, and 134340 Pluto at mag 14.9, both in the constellation Sagittarius.

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

A graph of the angular separation between Jupiter 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
Jupiter 19h43m40s 21°35'S Sagittarius -2.7 46"1
134340 Pluto 19h43m40s 22°17'S Sagittarius 14.9 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 163° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.

The sky on 28 Jun 2020

The sky on 28 June 2020
Sunrise
06:03
Sunset
21:04
Twilight ends
23:07
Twilight begins
04:00


Waxing Gibbous

60%

7 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:38 13:49 20:59
Venus 04:15 11:19 18:23
Moon 14:02 20:09 02:05
Mars 01:15 07:09 13:02
Jupiter 22:02 02:48 07:34
Saturn 22:22 03:13 08:04
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

14 Jul 2019  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
15 Jul 2020  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
17 Jul 2021  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
19 Jul 2022  –  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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