Conjunction of Mars and Eris

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and 136199 Eris will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 9°53' to the north of 136199 Eris.

From Cambridge however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 10° above the horizon at dusk.

Mars will be at mag 1.4 in the constellation Aries, and 136199 Eris at mag 18.6 in the neighbouring constellation of Cetus.

A graph of the angular separation between Mars 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
Mars 01h49m20s 11°17'N Aries 1.4 4"2
136199 Eris 01h49m20s 1°24'N Cetus 18.6 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 32° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 17 Mar 2032

The sky on 17 March 2032
Sunrise
06:49
Sunset
18:52
Twilight ends
20:27
Twilight begins
05:15


Waxing Crescent

45%

6 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:32 12:41 18:49
Venus 06:13 11:39 17:05
Moon 10:37 18:03 01:29
Mars 08:04 14:49 21:34
Jupiter 04:12 08:53 13:35
Saturn 10:34 18:02 01:29
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

20 Oct 2031  –  136199 Eris at opposition
19 Oct 2032  –  136199 Eris at opposition
19 Oct 2033  –  136199 Eris at opposition
20 Oct 2034  –  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.

Share