Conjunction of Uranus and Ceres

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Uranus and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Uranus passing 4°28' to the north of 1 Ceres.

From Cambridge however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will lie so far south that they will never rise more than 19° above the horizon.

Uranus will be at mag 5.7, and 1 Ceres at mag 8.8, both in the constellation Ophiuchus.

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 Uranus 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
Uranus 17h29m10s 23°24'S Ophiuchus 5.7 3"6
1 Ceres 17h29m10s 27°53'S Ophiuchus 8.8 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 94° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.

The sky on 12 May 2025

The sky on 12 May 2025
Sunrise
05:23
Sunset
19:55
Twilight ends
21:52
Twilight begins
03:27


Waning Gibbous

99%

15 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:46 11:29 18:11
Venus 03:38 09:50 16:03
Moon 19:22 00:10 04:51
Mars 10:57 18:15 01:33
Jupiter 07:17 14:52 22:27
Saturn 03:26 09:20 15:14
All times shown in EDT.

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 Jun 1987  –  1 Ceres at opposition
14 Sep 1988  –  1 Ceres at opposition
17 Dec 1989  –  1 Ceres at opposition
15 Apr 1991  –  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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