Conjunction of Mercury and Eris

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mercury and 136199 Eris will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 5°16' to the north of 136199 Eris.

From Columbus however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be 7° below the horizon at dawn.

Mercury will be at mag 0.2, and 136199 Eris at mag 18.6, both in the constellation Pisces.

A graph of the angular separation between Mercury 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
Mercury 01h54m20s 8°15'N Pisces 0.2 7"6
136199 Eris 01h54m20s 2°59'N Pisces 18.6 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 25° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 1 May 2025

The sky on 1 May 2025
Sunrise
06:29
Sunset
20:26
Twilight ends
22:10
Twilight begins
04:46


Waxing Crescent

28%

4 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:41 11:56 18:11
Venus 04:45 10:51 16:58
Moon 09:25 17:27 01:25
Mars 12:07 19:25 02:42
Jupiter 08:47 16:13 23:39
Saturn 04:53 10:47 16:40
All times shown in EDT.

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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20 Oct 2037  –  136199 Eris at opposition
21 Oct 2038  –  136199 Eris at opposition
21 Oct 2039  –  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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