Conjunction of Ceres and Eris

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


1 Ceres and 136199 Eris will share the same right ascension, with 1 Ceres passing 7°57' to the north of 136199 Eris.

From Columbus however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 7° above the horizon at dawn.

1 Ceres will be at mag 9.2, and 136199 Eris at mag 18.8, both in the constellation Cetus.

A graph of the angular separation between 1 Ceres and 136199 Eris 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 01h32m50s 0°21'S Cetus 9.2 0"0
136199 Eris 01h32m50s 8°18'S Cetus 18.8 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 63° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 5 Oct 2024

The sky on 5 October 2024
Sunrise
07:30
Sunset
19:07
Twilight ends
20:37
Twilight begins
05:59


Waxing Crescent

11%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:49 13:33 19:17
Venus 10:16 15:21 20:26
Moon 10:16 15:19 20:15
Mars 00:20 07:47 15:13
Jupiter 22:30 05:54 13:18
Saturn 17:59 23:34 05:08
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

10 Oct 1992  –  136199 Eris at opposition
10 Oct 1993  –  136199 Eris at opposition
11 Oct 1994  –  136199 Eris at opposition
11 Oct 1995  –  136199 Eris 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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