Conjunction of Venus and Pluto

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and 134340 Pluto will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 9°45' to the north of 134340 Pluto.

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 3° below the horizon at dawn.

Venus will be at mag -3.9 in the constellation Taurus, and 134340 Pluto at mag 16.3 in the neighbouring constellation of Orion.

A graph of the angular separation between Venus and 134340 Pluto 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 04h50m40s 21°35'N Taurus -3.9 10"6
134340 Pluto 04h50m40s 11°49'N Orion 16.3 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 21° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.

The sky on 18 Jul 2026

The sky on 18 July 2026
Sunrise
05:51
Sunset
20:02
Twilight ends
21:42
Twilight begins
04:10


Waxing Crescent

28%

4 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:24 12:17 19:09
Venus 09:24 15:51 22:18
Moon 10:40 16:49 22:49
Mars 02:47 09:55 17:02
Jupiter 06:30 13:29 20:29
Saturn 23:51 06:03 12:15
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

05 Dec 2141  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
06 Dec 2142  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
07 Dec 2143  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
08 Dec 2144  –  134340 Pluto 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.

Share