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°49' to the north of 136199 Eris.

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 18:33 (EDT), 30° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 21:27.

Mars will be at mag 1.2 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 01h51m30s 11°50'N Aries 1.2 5"0
136199 Eris 01h51m30s 2°00'N Cetus 18.6 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 54° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 24 Feb 2034

The sky on 24 February 2034
Sunrise
06:25
Sunset
17:26
Twilight ends
19:00
Twilight begins
04:51


Waxing Crescent

46%

6 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:20 10:26 15:33
Venus 07:02 12:43 18:24
Moon 09:52 17:02 00:19
Mars 08:29 15:16 22:03
Jupiter 06:57 12:36 18:16
Saturn 12:53 20:26 03:58
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.

Related news

20 Oct 2033  –  136199 Eris at opposition
20 Oct 2034  –  136199 Eris at opposition
21 Oct 2035  –  136199 Eris at opposition
20 Oct 2036  –  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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