Conjunction of Ceres and Pluto

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


1 Ceres and 134340 Pluto will share the same right ascension, with 1 Ceres passing 7°01' to the south of 134340 Pluto.

From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 01:28 (EDT) and reaching an altitude of 38° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:51.

1 Ceres will be at mag 8.7 in the constellation Scorpius, and 134340 Pluto at mag 14.5 in the neighbouring constellation of Ophiuchus.

A graph of the angular separation between 1 Ceres and 134340 Pluto 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 16h14m20s 15°00'S Scorpius 8.7 0"0
134340 Pluto 16h14m20s 7°58'S Ophiuchus 14.5 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 73° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 2 Oct 2024

The sky on 2 October 2024
Sunrise
06:48
Sunset
18:32
Twilight ends
20:04
Twilight begins
05:16


Waxing Crescent

0%

29 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:56 12:47 18:39
Venus 09:33 14:40 19:47
Moon 06:34 12:36 18:28
Mars 23:42 07:13 14:44
Jupiter 21:59 05:27 12:55
Saturn 17:34 23:07 04:41
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

20 May 1995  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
22 May 1996  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
25 May 1997  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
28 May 1998  –  134340 Pluto 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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