Conjunction of Venus and Eris

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and 136199 Eris will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 3°26' to the north of 136199 Eris.

From Fairfield however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 5° above the horizon at dawn.

Venus will be at mag -4.2, and 136199 Eris at mag 18.6, both in the constellation Pisces.

The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Venus 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
Venus 02h04m10s 9°59'N Pisces -4.2 20"4
136199 Eris 02h04m10s 6°32'N Pisces 18.6 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 45° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 23 May 2024

The sky on 23 May 2024
Sunrise
05:25
Sunset
20:12
Twilight ends
22:11
Twilight begins
03:26


Waning Gibbous

99%

15 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:34 11:23 18:11
Venus 05:19 12:35 19:50
Moon 19:39 00:25 05:04
Mars 03:28 09:51 16:14
Jupiter 05:19 12:34 19:48
Saturn 02:24 08:05 13:45
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

23 Oct 2048  –  136199 Eris at opposition
24 Oct 2049  –  136199 Eris at opposition
24 Oct 2050  –  136199 Eris at opposition
25 Oct 2051  –  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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