Conjunction of Mars and Neptune

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and Neptune will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 27' 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 15° from it.

Mars will be at mag 1.8, and Neptune at mag 8.0, both in the constellation Leo.

The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also 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 10h38m00s 9°52'N Leo 1.8 3"5
Neptune 10h38m00s 9°24'N Leo 8.0 2"1

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 16° from the Sun, which is in Leo 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


Waxing Crescent

0%

0 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.

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26 Feb 2097  –  Neptune at opposition
17 May 2097  –  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.

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