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 8°28' to the south of 136472 Makemake.

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 18° from it.

Mars will be at mag 1.5, 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 16h15m10s 21°23'S Scorpius 1.5 3"8
136472 Makemake 16h15m10s 12°54'S Scorpius 16.9 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 15° from the Sun, which is in Ophiuchus at this time of year.

The sky on 4 May 2026

The sky on 4 May 2026
Sunrise
05:57
Sunset
19:37
Twilight ends
21:11
Twilight begins
04:24


Waning Gibbous

89%

17 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:32 12:06 18:39
Venus 07:33 14:44 21:55
Moon 22:03 02:47 07:28
Mars 04:51 11:12 17:33
Jupiter 10:15 17:23 00:31
Saturn 04:31 10:38 16:46
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 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

24 May 2085  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
25 May 2086  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
27 May 2087  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
27 May 2088  –  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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