Conjunction of Mercury and Ceres

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mercury and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 5°54' to the north of 1 Ceres.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 20° from it.

Mercury will be at mag -0.4, and 1 Ceres at mag 9.2, both in the constellation Aquarius.

A graph of the angular separation between Mercury and 1 Ceres 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
Mercury 22h55m20s 9°19'S Aquarius -0.4 5"2
1 Ceres 22h55m20s 15°14'S Aquarius 9.2 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 16° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 10 Jun 2026

The sky on 10 June 2026
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
20:02
Twilight ends
21:47
Twilight begins
03:53


Waning Crescent

18%

25 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:18 14:33 21:48
Venus 08:21 15:30 22:40
Moon 02:03 08:34 15:15
Mars 03:44 10:33 17:21
Jupiter 08:21 15:25 22:30
Saturn 02:15 08:26 14:36
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

07 Jul 1955  –  1 Ceres at opposition
02 Oct 1956  –  1 Ceres at opposition
08 Jan 1958  –  1 Ceres at opposition
08 May 1959  –  1 Ceres 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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