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 6°26' to the north of 136199 Eris.

From Fairfield however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 17° from it.

Mercury will be at mag -0.9, 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 01h54m50s 9°54'N Pisces -0.9 5"3
136199 Eris 01h54m50s 3°28'N Pisces 18.6 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 13° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 7 May 2025

The sky on 7 May 2025
Sunrise
05:40
Sunset
19:56
Twilight ends
21:46
Twilight begins
03:51


Waxing Gibbous

82%

10 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:58 11:26 17:55
Venus 03:55 10:04 16:13
Moon 15:21 21:36 03:41
Mars 11:16 18:34 01:51
Jupiter 07:45 15:16 22:46
Saturn 03:52 09:46 15:40
All times shown in EDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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

21 Oct 2038  –  136199 Eris at opposition
21 Oct 2039  –  136199 Eris at opposition
21 Oct 2040  –  136199 Eris at opposition
21 Oct 2041  –  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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