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 7°48' to the north of 134340 Pluto.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 12° above the horizon at dawn.

Mars will be at mag 0.8, 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 21h49m30s 14°38'S Capricornus 0.8 5"9
134340 Pluto 21h49m30s 22°27'S Capricornus 15.5 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 63° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 4 Mar 2026

The sky on 4 March 2026
Sunrise
06:14
Sunset
17:50
Twilight ends
19:13
Twilight begins
04:51


Waning Gibbous

93%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:15 12:15 18:15
Venus 06:58 12:54 18:51
Moon 18:25 00:39 06:44
Mars 05:47 11:17 16:47
Jupiter 12:55 20:04 03:14
Saturn 07:12 13:11 19:11
All times shown in PST.

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

11 Aug 2036  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
13 Aug 2037  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
15 Aug 2038  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
17 Aug 2039  –  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.

Share