Conjunction of Neptune and Ceres

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Neptune and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Neptune passing 17' 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 7° above the horizon at dusk.

Neptune will be at mag 8.0, 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 Neptune 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
Neptune 15h34m10s 17°30'S Libra 8.0 2"1
1 Ceres 15h34m10s 17°13'S Libra 9.0 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 32° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 10 Sep 2025

The sky on 10 September 2025
Sunrise
06:29
Sunset
19:05
Twilight ends
20:30
Twilight begins
05:04


Waning Gibbous

87%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:18 12:41 19:03
Venus 04:11 10:58 17:45
Moon 20:18 02:55 09:42
Mars 09:13 14:52 20:32
Jupiter 01:48 08:55 16:02
Saturn 19:38 01:33 07:29
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

14 Apr 1968  –  1 Ceres at opposition
24 Jul 1969  –  1 Ceres at opposition
21 Oct 1970  –  1 Ceres at opposition
31 Jan 1972  –  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.

Share