Conjunction of Jupiter and Ceres

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Jupiter and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Jupiter passing 5°27' to the south of 1 Ceres.

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 20:49 (EDT), 42° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 01:08.

Jupiter will be at mag -2.1 in the constellation Gemini, and 1 Ceres at mag 8.7 in the neighbouring constellation of Auriga.

A graph of the angular separation between Jupiter 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
Jupiter 06h25m30s 23°25'N Gemini -2.1 34"5
1 Ceres 06h25m30s 28°52'N Auriga 8.7 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 62° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 8 Oct 2024

The sky on 8 October 2024
Sunrise
06:47
Sunset
18:13
Twilight ends
19:46
Twilight begins
05:13


Waxing Crescent

37%

6 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:18 12:52 18:26
Venus 09:42 14:36 19:31
Moon 12:48 17:00 21:10
Mars 23:20 06:54 14:28
Jupiter 21:23 04:55 12:27
Saturn 17:02 22:34 04:06
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

17 Dec 1989  –  1 Ceres at opposition
15 Apr 1991  –  1 Ceres at opposition
24 Jul 1992  –  1 Ceres at opposition
20 Oct 1993  –  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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