Conjunction of Mars and Neptune

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and Neptune will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 2°02' to the north of Neptune.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 14° from it.

Mars will be at mag 1.6, and Neptune at mag 8.0, both in the constellation Taurus.

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 Mars and Neptune 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 05h41m50s 24°11'N Taurus 1.6 3"6
Neptune 05h41m50s 22°09'N Taurus 8.0 2"2

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 14° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 11 Jun 2026

The sky on 11 June 2026
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
20:03
Twilight ends
21:47
Twilight begins
03:53


Waning Crescent

12%

26 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:21 14:35 21:48
Venus 08:23 15:31 22:40
Moon 02:34 09:25 16:25
Mars 03:42 10:31 17:21
Jupiter 08:18 15:22 22:27
Saturn 02:12 08:22 14:33
All times shown in PDT.

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 DE440 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

04 Mar 2064  –  Neptune ends retrograde motion
01 Oct 2064  –  Neptune enters retrograde motion
19 Dec 2064  –  Neptune at opposition
07 Mar 2065  –  Neptune ends retrograde motion

Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Share