Conjunction of Mercury and Pluto

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mercury and 134340 Pluto will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 7°35' to the north of 134340 Pluto.

From Jacksonville however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be 0° below the horizon at dawn.

Mercury will be at mag 0.1, and 134340 Pluto at mag 15.5, both in the constellation Capricornus.

A graph of the angular separation between Mercury 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
Mercury 21h26m20s 15°19'S Capricornus 0.1 7"4
134340 Pluto 21h26m20s 22°54'S Capricornus 15.5 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 27° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 7 Mar 2034

The sky on 7 March 2034
Sunrise
06:43
Sunset
18:28
Twilight ends
19:48
Twilight begins
05:23


Waning Gibbous

92%

17 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:26 10:52 16:18
Venus 07:31 13:32 19:34
Moon 20:07 02:07 08:03
Mars 09:07 15:44 22:22
Jupiter 06:55 12:45 18:35
Saturn 13:24 20:23 03:22
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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11 Aug 2035  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
12 Aug 2036  –  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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