Conjunction of Neptune and Eris

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Neptune and 136199 Eris will share the same right ascension, with Neptune passing 6°42' to the north of 136199 Eris.

From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 22:53, when they reach an altitude of 21° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 03:07, 52° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:25, 41° above your south-western horizon.

Neptune will be at mag 7.8, and 136199 Eris at mag 18.6, both in the constellation Pisces.

A graph of the angular separation between Neptune 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
Neptune 01h55m30s 9°56'N Pisces 7.8 2"3
136199 Eris 01h55m30s 3°13'N Pisces 18.6 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 142° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.

The sky on 4 May 2025

The sky on 4 May 2025
Sunrise
05:44
Sunset
19:52
Twilight ends
21:41
Twilight begins
03:56


Waxing Gibbous

55%

7 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:59 11:21 17:43
Venus 04:01 10:08 16:16
Moon 12:09 19:30 02:39
Mars 11:20 18:40 01:59
Jupiter 07:55 15:25 22:55
Saturn 04:03 09:57 15:51
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.

Related news

20 Oct 2037  –  136199 Eris at opposition
21 Oct 2038  –  136199 Eris at opposition
21 Oct 2039  –  136199 Eris at opposition
21 Oct 2040  –  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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