Conjunction of Saturn and Makemake

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Saturn and 136472 Makemake will share the same right ascension, with Saturn passing 2°34' to the north of 136472 Makemake.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible between 23:00 and 03:55. They will become accessible at around 23:00, when they rise to an altitude of 21° above your south-eastern horizon. They will reach their highest point in the sky at 01:27, 31° above your southern horizon. They will become inaccessible at around 03:55 when they sink below 21° above your south-western horizon.

Saturn will be at mag 0.0, and 136472 Makemake at mag 16.5, both in the constellation Ophiuchus.

The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Saturn 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
Saturn 17h22m10s 21°38'S Ophiuchus 0.0 18"3
136472 Makemake 17h22m10s 24°13'S Ophiuchus 16.5 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 170° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 24 Jun 2026

The sky on 24 June 2026
Sunrise
05:39
Sunset
20:06
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:54


Waxing Gibbous

78%

9 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:26 14:26 21:27
Venus 08:46 15:42 22:39
Moon 15:51 21:04 02:11
Mars 03:21 10:18 17:15
Jupiter 07:39 14:42 21:45
Saturn 01:23 07:34 13:45
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

12 Jun 2104  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
13 Jun 2105  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
14 Jun 2106  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
15 Jun 2107  –  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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