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 9°27' to the south of 134340 Pluto.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 16° from it.

1 Ceres will be at mag 8.6 in the constellation Virgo, and 134340 Pluto at mag 14.6 in the neighbouring constellation of Coma Berenices.

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 12h34m00s 4°11'N Virgo 8.6 0"0
134340 Pluto 12h34m00s 13°38'N Coma Berenices 14.6 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 12° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 27 Sep 2025

The sky on 27 September 2025
Sunrise
06:41
Sunset
18:41
Twilight ends
20:04
Twilight begins
05:17


Waxing Crescent

37%

6 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:36 13:22 19:09
Venus 04:44 11:12 17:39
Moon 12:22 17:06 21:46
Mars 09:00 14:28 19:56
Jupiter 00:53 07:59 15:04
Saturn 18:28 00:22 06:16
All times shown in PDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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 Mar 1972  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
23 Mar 1973  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
26 Mar 1974  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
29 Mar 1975  –  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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