Conjunction of Mars and Makemake

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and 136472 Makemake will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 8°39' to the north 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 19° from it.

Mars will be at mag 1.3, and 136472 Makemake at mag 16.4, both in the constellation Sagittarius.

A graph of the angular separation between Mars 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
Mars 18h33m10s 24°11'S Sagittarius 1.3 4"0
136472 Makemake 18h33m10s 32°50'S Sagittarius 16.4 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 17° from the Sun, which is in Ophiuchus at this time of year.

The sky on 5 Jul 2026

The sky on 5 July 2026
Sunrise
05:43
Sunset
20:06
Twilight ends
21:50
Twilight begins
03:59


Waning Gibbous

61%

21 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:47 13:39 20:32
Venus 09:05 15:48 22:32
Moon 23:11 05:01 10:58
Mars 03:05 10:08 17:10
Jupiter 07:07 14:09 21:10
Saturn 00:41 06:53 13:04
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

30 Jun 2121  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
01 Jul 2122  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
02 Jul 2123  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
03 Jul 2124  –  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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