136108 Haumea at solar conjunction

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Dwarf Planets feed


136108 Haumea will pass close to the Sun in the sky as its orbit carries it around the far side of the solar system from the Earth.

At closest approach, 136108 Haumea will appear at a separation of only 27° from the Sun, making it totally unobservable for several weeks while it is lost in the Sun's glare.

At around the same time, 136108 Haumea will also be at its most distant from the Earth – receding to a distance of 49.98 AU – since the two planets will lie on opposite sides of the solar system.

Over following weeks and months, 136108 Haumea will re-emerge to the west of the Sun, gradually becoming visible for ever-longer periods in the pre-dawn sky. After around six months, it will reach opposition, when it will be visible for virtually the whole night. A chart of the path of 136108 Haumea across the sky in 2032 can be found here, and a chart of its rising and setting times here.

The position of 136108 Haumea at the moment it passes solar conjunction will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
136108 Haumea 15h05m20s 11°13'N Bootes 0.0"
Sun 14h31m 14°54'S Libra 32'14"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 2 Nov 2032

The sky on 2 November 2032
Sunrise
04:48
Sunset
17:14
Twilight ends
18:27
Twilight begins
03:35


Waning Crescent

0%

29 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:01 12:17 18:33
Venus 07:23 13:41 19:59
Moon 04:11 10:30 16:50
Mars 02:36 08:38 14:40
Jupiter 10:02 16:17 22:32
Saturn 21:10 02:59 08:48
All times shown in GMT-03.

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 Apr 2032  –  136108 Haumea at opposition
01 May 2033  –  136108 Haumea at opposition
02 May 2034  –  136108 Haumea at opposition
04 May 2035  –  136108 Haumea at opposition

Image credit

© Mike Brown et al., CalTech and Keck Observatory

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