Venus and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 3°23' to the south of 1 Ceres.
From South El Monte , the pair will become visible at around 21:07 (PDT), 25° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 32 minutes after the Sun at 23:29.
Venus will be at mag -4.2, and 1 Ceres at mag 8.8, both in the constellation Gemini.
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 Venus 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 |
| Venus | 07h24m30s | 24°36'N | Gemini | -4.2 | 18"4 |
| 1 Ceres | 07h24m30s | 28°00'N | Gemini | 8.8 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 43° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.
The sky on 16 May 2026
| The sky on 16 May 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
0% 0 days old |
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
| 18 Dec 1966 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 14 Apr 1968 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 24 Jul 1969 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 21 Oct 1970 | – 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.