Conjunction of Venus and Makemake

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and 136472 Makemake will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 15' to the north of 136472 Makemake.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 19° above the horizon at dawn.

Venus will be at mag -4.2, and 136472 Makemake at mag 16.8, both in the constellation Ophiuchus.

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 Venus 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
Venus 17h00m50s 20°20'S Ophiuchus -4.2 17"2
136472 Makemake 17h00m50s 20°35'S Ophiuchus 16.8 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 43° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 17 Jun 2026

The sky on 17 June 2026
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
20:05
Twilight ends
21:50
Twilight begins
03:52


Waxing Crescent

17%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:29 14:37 21:45
Venus 08:34 15:37 22:40
Moon 08:27 15:43 22:50
Mars 03:32 10:25 17:18
Jupiter 08:00 15:04 22:07
Saturn 01:49 08:00 14:11
All times shown in PDT.

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

06 Jun 2098  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
07 Jun 2099  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
08 Jun 2100  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
09 Jun 2101  –  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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