Conjunction of Saturn and Pluto

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Saturn and 134340 Pluto will share the same right ascension, with Saturn passing 7°46' to the north of 134340 Pluto.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 18:04 (PDT), 44° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 21:04, 69° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 01:55, when they sink below 21° above your western horizon.

Saturn will be at mag -0.4 in the constellation Taurus, and 134340 Pluto at mag 16.2 in the neighbouring constellation of Orion.

A graph of the angular separation between Saturn 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
Saturn 05h14m50s 21°40'N Taurus -0.4 20"1
134340 Pluto 05h14m50s 13°54'N Orion 16.2 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 140° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 26 Jul 2026

The sky on 26 July 2026
Sunrise
05:56
Sunset
19:57
Twilight ends
21:35
Twilight begins
04:18


Waxing Gibbous

94%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:46 11:43 18:40
Venus 09:34 15:50 22:07
Moon 18:25 23:07 03:51
Mars 02:37 09:47 16:57
Jupiter 06:07 13:05 20:03
Saturn 23:20 05:32 11:43
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

13 Dec 2149  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
14 Dec 2150  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
15 Dec 2151  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
15 Dec 2152  –  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