Mars and 134340 Pluto will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 1°25' to the south of 134340 Pluto.
From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 01:27 (EST) and reaching an altitude of 24° above the southern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 04:45.
Mars will be at mag -0.3, and 134340 Pluto at mag 15.0, both in the constellation Sagittarius.
The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.
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 | 19h30m50s | 22°55'S | Sagittarius | -0.3 | 10"5 |
| 134340 Pluto | 19h30m50s | 21°30'S | Sagittarius | 15.0 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 104° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.
The sky on 25 Apr 2018
| The sky on 25 April 2018 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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86% 9 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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Source
The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 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.
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| 10 Jul 2017 | – 134340 Pluto at opposition |
| 12 Jul 2018 | – 134340 Pluto at opposition |
| 14 Jul 2019 | – 134340 Pluto at opposition |
| 15 Jul 2020 | – 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.