Mars and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 5°11' to the north of 1 Ceres.
From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 00:10 (PDT) and reaching an altitude of 61° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:21.
Mars will be at mag 0.1, and 1 Ceres at mag 8.8, both in the constellation Taurus.
A graph of the angular separation between Mars 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 |
| Mars | 04h29m00s | 20°41'N | Taurus | 0.1 | 8"8 |
| 1 Ceres | 04h29m00s | 15°30'N | Taurus | 8.8 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 86° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.
The sky on 6 May 2026
| The sky on 6 May 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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69% 20 days old |
All times shown in PDT.
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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.
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| 29 Aug 1974 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 28 Nov 1975 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 22 Mar 1977 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 07 Jul 1978 | – 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.