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 5'26" to the north of 134340 Pluto.

From Fairfield however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 11° above the horizon at dusk.

Venus will be at mag -4.7, and 134340 Pluto at mag 15.1, both in the constellation Sagittarius.

The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also 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 19h49m10s 22°42'S Sagittarius -4.7 46"2
134340 Pluto 19h49m10s 22°48'S Sagittarius 15.1 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 35° from the Sun, which is in Ophiuchus at this time of year.

The sky on 11 Dec 2021

The sky on 11 December 2021
Sunrise
07:06
Sunset
16:23
Twilight ends
18:03
Twilight begins
05:26


Waxing Gibbous

62%

7 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:48 12:14 16:41
Venus 09:41 14:19 18:56
Moon 12:52 18:39 00:35
Mars 05:25 10:15 15:06
Jupiter 11:12 16:26 21:41
Saturn 10:24 15:18 20:13
All times shown in EST.

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.

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17 Jul 2021  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
19 Jul 2022  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
21 Jul 2023  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
23 Jul 2024  –  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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