Mercury and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 9°14' to the south of 1 Ceres.
From Fairfield however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 1° above the horizon at dusk.
Mercury will be at mag -0.0, and 1 Ceres at mag 8.7, both in the constellation Virgo.
A graph of the angular separation between Mercury 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 |
| Mercury | 11h59m50s | 0°58'S | Virgo | -0.0 | 6"0 |
| 1 Ceres | 11h59m50s | 8°16'N | Virgo | 8.7 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 24° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.
The sky on 3 Oct 2024
| The sky on 3 October 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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2% 1 day old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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.
Related news
| 31 Jan 1995 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 29 May 1996 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 29 Aug 1997 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 27 Nov 1998 | – 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.