Conjunction of Mercury and Makemake

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mercury and 136472 Makemake will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 5°42' 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 14° from it.

Mercury will be at mag -0.5, and 136472 Makemake at mag 16.8, both in the constellation Ophiuchus.

A graph of the angular separation between Mercury 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
Mercury 16h45m10s 24°21'S Ophiuchus -0.5 5"0
136472 Makemake 16h45m10s 18°38'S Ophiuchus 16.8 0"0

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

The sky on 14 Jun 2026

The sky on 14 June 2026
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
20:04
Twilight ends
21:49
Twilight begins
03:52


Waning Crescent

0%

29 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:26 14:37 21:48
Venus 08:28 15:34 22:40
Moon 04:52 12:29 20:09
Mars 03:37 10:28 17:20
Jupiter 08:09 15:13 22:17
Saturn 02:00 08:11 14:22
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

03 Jun 2095  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
03 Jun 2096  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
04 Jun 2097  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
06 Jun 2098  –  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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