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 8°43' to the north of 134340 Pluto.

From Columbus however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be 1° below the horizon at dawn.

Mars will be at mag 1.2, and 134340 Pluto at mag 15.6, both in the constellation Aquarius.

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 22h00m20s 13°29'S Aquarius 1.2 4"6
134340 Pluto 22h00m20s 22°12'S Aquarius 15.6 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 40° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 7 May 2025

The sky on 7 May 2025
Sunrise
06:22
Sunset
20:32
Twilight ends
22:19
Twilight begins
04:35


Waxing Gibbous

82%

10 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:38 12:05 18:32
Venus 04:35 10:43 16:52
Moon 16:02 22:16 04:20
Mars 11:58 19:13 02:27
Jupiter 08:28 15:55 23:21
Saturn 04:31 10:25 16:19
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

15 Aug 2038  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
17 Aug 2039  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
18 Aug 2040  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
19 Aug 2041  –  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