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°29' to the north of 136199 Eris.

From Cambridge however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 18° from it.

1 Ceres will be at mag 9.0 in the constellation Pisces, and 136199 Eris at mag 18.7 in the neighbouring constellation of 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 01h40m10s 3°49'N Pisces 9.0 0"0
136199 Eris 01h40m10s 3°40'S Cetus 18.7 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 17° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 13 May 2024

The sky on 13 May 2024
Sunrise
05:22
Sunset
19:57
Twilight ends
21:54
Twilight begins
03:25


Waxing Crescent

36%

5 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:31 11:02 17:33
Venus 05:11 12:16 19:20
Moon 09:56 17:52 01:36
Mars 03:41 09:54 16:07
Jupiter 05:39 12:55 20:10
Saturn 02:54 08:33 14:12
All times shown in EDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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

15 Oct 2011  –  136199 Eris at opposition
15 Oct 2012  –  136199 Eris at opposition
15 Oct 2013  –  136199 Eris at opposition
16 Oct 2014  –  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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