Conjunction of Jupiter and Ceres

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Jupiter and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Jupiter passing 2'12" to the south of 1 Ceres.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 20° above the horizon at dusk.

Jupiter will be at mag -1.9, and 1 Ceres at mag 9.0, both in the constellation Libra.

The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Jupiter 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
Jupiter 15h41m50s 18°58'S Libra -1.9 33"6
1 Ceres 15h41m50s 18°55'S Libra 9.0 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 62° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 30 Dec 2025

The sky on 30 December 2025
Sunrise
06:55
Sunset
16:51
Twilight ends
18:21
Twilight begins
05:25


Waxing Gibbous

90%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:05 10:59 15:52
Venus 06:52 11:46 16:40
Moon 13:18 20:35 04:00
Mars 07:10 12:04 16:57
Jupiter 17:41 00:47 07:54
Saturn 11:08 17:01 22:53
All times shown in PST.

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

08 May 1959  –  1 Ceres at opposition
11 Aug 1960  –  1 Ceres at opposition
08 Nov 1961  –  1 Ceres at opposition
25 Feb 1963  –  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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