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 9°49' 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 16° from it.

Mercury will be at mag -0.5 in the constellation Aries, and 136199 Eris at mag 18.6 in the neighbouring constellation of 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 01h58m00s 14°26'N Aries -0.5 7"0
136199 Eris 01h58m00s 4°37'N Pisces 18.6 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 18° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 25 Jul 2024

The sky on 25 July 2024
Sunrise
05:39
Sunset
20:16
Twilight ends
22:11
Twilight begins
03:43


Waning Gibbous

68%

20 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:02 14:41 21:20
Venus 06:50 13:56 21:02
Moon 22:28 04:24 10:33
Mars 01:24 08:42 16:00
Jupiter 01:59 09:24 16:48
Saturn 22:19 04:00 09:40
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

22 Oct 2042  –  136199 Eris at opposition
23 Oct 2043  –  136199 Eris at opposition
22 Oct 2044  –  136199 Eris at opposition
23 Oct 2045  –  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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