Conjunction of Mars and Pluto

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and 134340 Pluto will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 7°59' to the north of 134340 Pluto.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible between 18:31 and 04:37. They will become accessible at around 18:31, when they rise to an altitude of 21° above your eastern horizon. They will reach their highest point in the sky at 23:34, 74° above your southern horizon. They will become inaccessible at around 04:37 when they sink below 21° above your western horizon.

Mars will be at mag -1.6, and 134340 Pluto at mag 15.8, both in the constellation Gemini.

A graph of the angular separation between Mars 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
Mars 06h27m00s 26°55'N Gemini -1.6 15"5
134340 Pluto 06h27m00s 18°56'N Gemini 15.8 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 175° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 6 Aug 2026

The sky on 6 August 2026
Sunrise
06:04
Sunset
19:48
Twilight ends
21:22
Twilight begins
04:29


Waning Crescent

35%

23 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:38 11:39 18:41
Venus 09:46 15:47 21:49
Moon 23:43 06:56 14:17
Mars 02:24 09:36 16:48
Jupiter 05:36 12:32 19:28
Saturn 22:36 04:48 11:00
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

29 Dec 2165  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
31 Dec 2166  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
01 Jan 2168  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
01 Jan 2169  –  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.

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