Venus and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 36' to the south of 1 Ceres.
From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 21:04 (EDT), 22° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 39 minutes after the Sun at 23:27.
Venus will be at mag -4.1, and 1 Ceres at mag 8.8, both in the constellation Taurus.
The pair will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.
A graph of the angular separation between Venus 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 |
| Venus | 05h40m50s | 25°44'N | Taurus | -4.1 | 16"5 |
| 1 Ceres | 05h40m50s | 26°21'N | Taurus | 8.8 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 41° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.
The sky on 29 Sep 2024
| The sky on 29 September 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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5% 26 days 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
| 27 Nov 1998 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 21 Mar 2000 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 06 Jul 2001 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 03 Oct 2002 | – 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.