Mars and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 7°26' to the north of 1 Ceres.
From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 01:44 (EDT) – 3 hours and 46 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 26° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 04:08.
Mars will be at mag 0.6 in the constellation Aries, and 1 Ceres at mag 9.1 in the neighbouring constellation of Cetus.
A graph of the angular separation between Mars 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 |
| Mars | 02h48m20s | 14°47'N | Aries | 0.6 | 6"6 |
| 1 Ceres | 02h48m20s | 7°20'N | Cetus | 9.1 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 67° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.
The sky on 4 Oct 2024
| The sky on 4 October 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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4% 2 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
| 11 Aug 2006 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 08 Nov 2007 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 24 Feb 2009 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 17 Jun 2010 | – 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.