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 8°51' 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 4° above the horizon at dusk.

Venus will be at mag -4.0, and 136472 Makemake at mag 16.5, both in the constellation Sagittarius.

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 18h41m40s 24°55'S Sagittarius -4.0 13"0
136472 Makemake 18h41m40s 33°47'S Sagittarius 16.5 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 34° from the Sun, which is in Scorpius at this time of year.

The sky on 6 Jul 2026

The sky on 6 July 2026
Sunrise
05:44
Sunset
20:06
Twilight ends
21:50
Twilight begins
04:00


Waning Gibbous

50%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:41 13:33 20:25
Venus 09:06 15:49 22:31
Moon 23:37 05:44 11:59
Mars 03:03 10:07 17:10
Jupiter 07:05 14:06 21:07
Saturn 00:37 06:49 13:01
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

02 Jul 2123  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
03 Jul 2124  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
04 Jul 2125  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
06 Jul 2126  –  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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