Conjunction of Mars and Pluto

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and 134340 Pluto will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 6°24' to the north of 134340 Pluto.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 01:52 (PDT) – 3 hours and 54 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 25° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 04:39.

Mars 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 Mars 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
Mars 21h37m50s 16°19'S Capricornus -0.1 9"8
134340 Pluto 21h37m50s 22°44'S Capricornus 15.5 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 94° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 17 May 2035

The sky on 17 May 2035
Sunrise
05:46
Sunset
19:47
Twilight ends
21:25
Twilight begins
04:08


Waxing Gibbous

83%

10 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:23 13:30 20:36
Venus 04:45 11:18 17:52
Moon 15:53 21:56 03:54
Mars 01:33 06:50 12:08
Jupiter 04:43 11:18 17:53
Saturn 10:16 17:19 00:21
All times shown in PDT.

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

09 Aug 2034  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
11 Aug 2035  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
11 Aug 2036  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
13 Aug 2037  –  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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