Conjunction of Mars and Makemake

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and 136472 Makemake will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 9°42' to the south of 136472 Makemake.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 02:18 (PDT) and reaching an altitude of 36° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:47.

Mars will be at mag 1.4, and 136472 Makemake at mag 16.9, both in the constellation Scorpius.

A graph of the angular separation between Mars and 136472 Makemake 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 16h05m50s 20°22'S Scorpius 1.4 4"9
136472 Makemake 16h05m50s 10°40'S Scorpius 16.9 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 57° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 2 May 2026

The sky on 2 May 2026
Sunrise
05:59
Sunset
19:36
Twilight ends
21:09
Twilight begins
04:26


Waning Gibbous

96%

15 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:30 11:59 18:28
Venus 07:32 14:42 21:51
Moon 20:04 01:09 06:08
Mars 04:55 11:14 17:34
Jupiter 10:21 17:30 00:38
Saturn 04:39 10:45 16:52
All times shown in PDT.

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 May 2081  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
22 May 2082  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
23 May 2083  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
23 May 2084  –  136472 Makemake 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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