Conjunction of Saturn and Eris

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Saturn and 136199 Eris will share the same right ascension, with Saturn passing 8°18' to the north of 136199 Eris.

From Fairfield however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 16° from it.

Saturn will be at mag 0.4 in the constellation Pisces, and 136199 Eris at mag 18.6 in the neighbouring constellation of Cetus.

A graph of the angular separation between Saturn and 136199 Eris 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
Saturn 01h47m50s 8°44'N Pisces 0.4 16"2
136199 Eris 01h47m50s 0°25'N Cetus 18.6 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 16° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 1 Apr 2028

The sky on 1 April 2028
Sunrise
06:33
Sunset
19:17
Twilight ends
20:52
Twilight begins
04:58


Waxing Crescent

45%

6 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:21 12:20 18:19
Venus 08:16 15:48 23:20
Moon 10:21 18:15 02:05
Mars 06:33 12:47 19:01
Jupiter 17:11 23:33 05:55
Saturn 07:24 13:58 20:32
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

19 Oct 2027  –  136199 Eris at opposition
18 Oct 2028  –  136199 Eris at opposition
19 Oct 2029  –  136199 Eris at opposition
19 Oct 2030  –  136199 Eris 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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