Conjunction of Ceres and Pluto

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


1 Ceres and 134340 Pluto will share the same right ascension, with 1 Ceres passing 1°07' to the south of 134340 Pluto.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 23:13, when they reach an altitude of 21° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 04:17, 75° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:55, 63° above your south-western horizon.

1 Ceres will be at mag 7.8, and 134340 Pluto at mag 14.7, both in the constellation Leo.

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 1 Ceres 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
1 Ceres 11h18m50s 18°13'N Leo 7.8 0"0
134340 Pluto 11h18m50s 19°20'N Leo 14.7 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 119° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 26 Dec 2025

The sky on 26 December 2025
Sunrise
06:53
Sunset
16:49
Twilight ends
18:18
Twilight begins
05:23


Waxing Crescent

42%

6 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:52 10:48 15:44
Venus 06:46 11:40 16:34
Moon 11:10 17:11 23:21
Mars 07:13 12:06 16:59
Jupiter 17:59 01:05 08:11
Saturn 11:23 17:16 23:08
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

27 Feb 1962  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
02 Mar 1963  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
03 Mar 1964  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
05 Mar 1965  –  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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