© NASA/New Horizons

134340 Pluto at solar conjunction

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Dwarf Planets feed

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The sky at

134340 Pluto will pass close to the Sun in the sky as its orbit carries it around the far side of the solar system from the Earth.

At closest approach, 134340 Pluto will appear at a separation of only 2°47' from the Sun, making it totally unobservable for several weeks while it is lost in the Sun's glare.

At around the same time, 134340 Pluto will also be at its most distant from the Earth – receding to a distance of 35.92 AU – since the two planets will lie on opposite sides of the solar system.

Over following weeks and months, 134340 Pluto will re-emerge to the west of the Sun, gradually becoming visible for ever-longer periods in the pre-dawn sky. After around six months, it will reach opposition, when it will be visible for virtually the whole night. A chart of the path of 134340 Pluto across the sky in 2024 can be found here, and a chart of its rising and setting times here.

The position of 134340 Pluto at the moment it passes solar conjunction will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
134340 Pluto 20h09m50s 22°56'S Capricornus 0.0"
Sun 20h07m 20°13'S Capricornus 32'30"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 20 Jan 2024

The sky on 20 January 2024
Sunrise
07:23
Sunset
17:15
Twilight ends
18:49
Twilight begins
05:49

9-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

79%

9 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:01 10:44 15:28
Venus 05:10 09:56 14:42
Moon 12:42 20:23 04:12
Mars 06:22 11:03 15:43
Jupiter 11:42 18:26 01:11
Saturn 09:14 14:40 20:06
All times shown in EST.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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.

Related news

22 Jul 2023  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
23 Jul 2024  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
25 Jul 2025  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
27 Jul 2026  –  134340 Pluto at opposition

Image credit

© NASA/New Horizons

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