Conjunction of Mercury and Haumea

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mercury and 136108 Haumea will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 4'06" to the north of 136108 Haumea.

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 20° from it.

Mercury will be at mag -0.2, and 136108 Haumea at mag 16.0, both in the constellation Capricornus.

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 Mercury and 136108 Haumea 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 20h30m10s 20°17'S Capricornus -0.2 5"4
136108 Haumea 20h30m10s 20°21'S Capricornus 16.0 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 20° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 20 Jun 2026

The sky on 20 June 2026
Sunrise
05:38
Sunset
20:06
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:53


Waxing Crescent

39%

5 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:29 14:34 21:39
Venus 08:39 15:40 22:40
Moon 11:52 18:12 00:22
Mars 03:28 10:22 17:17
Jupiter 07:51 14:54 21:58
Saturn 01:38 07:49 14:00
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

27 Jul 2101  –  136108 Haumea at opposition
29 Jul 2102  –  136108 Haumea at opposition
31 Jul 2103  –  136108 Haumea at opposition
01 Aug 2104  –  136108 Haumea 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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