Conjunction of Ceres and Haumea

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


1 Ceres and 136108 Haumea will share the same right ascension, with 1 Ceres passing 38' to the north of 136108 Haumea.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 19:04 (PDT), 40° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 22:51, 81° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 04:09, when they sink below 21° above your western horizon.

1 Ceres will be at mag 7.2, and 136108 Haumea at mag 17.3, both in the constellation Leo Minor.

The pair will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably 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 136108 Haumea 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 10h43m50s 25°49'N Leo Minor 7.2 0"0
136108 Haumea 10h43m50s 25°11'N Leo Minor 17.3 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 149° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 18 May 2026

The sky on 18 May 2026
Sunrise
05:46
Sunset
19:48
Twilight ends
21:27
Twilight begins
04:07


Waxing Crescent

9%

2 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:02 13:07 20:12
Venus 07:46 15:02 22:19
Moon 07:13 14:53 22:31
Mars 04:25 10:57 17:29
Jupiter 09:31 16:37 23:44
Saturn 03:40 09:49 15:57
All times shown in PDT.

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

21 Feb 1963  –  136108 Haumea at opposition
22 Feb 1964  –  136108 Haumea at opposition
22 Feb 1965  –  136108 Haumea at opposition
24 Feb 1966  –  136108 Haumea 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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