Conjunction of Venus and Ceres

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 18' 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 14° above the horizon at dusk.

Venus will be at mag -4.3, and 1 Ceres at mag 9.2, both in the constellation Ophiuchus.

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 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 17h37m50s 26°34'S Ophiuchus -4.3 21"8
1 Ceres 17h37m50s 26°15'S Ophiuchus 9.2 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 46° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.

The sky on 15 Dec 2025

The sky on 15 December 2025
Sunrise
06:48
Sunset
16:43
Twilight ends
18:13
Twilight begins
05:18


Waning Crescent

12%

26 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:18 10:25 15:32
Venus 06:26 11:23 16:20
Moon 03:02 08:22 13:35
Mars 07:20 12:13 17:05
Jupiter 18:48 01:54 08:59
Saturn 12:06 17:57 23:49
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

29 May 1973  –  1 Ceres at opposition
29 Aug 1974  –  1 Ceres at opposition
28 Nov 1975  –  1 Ceres at opposition
22 Mar 1977  –  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.

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