Conjunction of Mars and Ceres

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 7°27' to the south of 1 Ceres.

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 21:36 (EST), 26° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 58 minutes after the Sun at 00:12.

Mars will be at mag 0.3, and 1 Ceres at mag 8.6, both in the constellation Virgo.

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 13h42m00s 11°31'S Virgo 0.3 8"3
1 Ceres 13h42m00s 4°03'S Virgo 8.6 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 88° from the Sun, which is in Cancer at this time of year.

The sky on 23 Nov 2024

The sky on 23 November 2024
Sunrise
06:43
Sunset
16:15
Twilight ends
17:54
Twilight begins
05:03


Waning Crescent

38%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:33 12:55 17:17
Venus 10:09 14:32 18:54
Moon 23:09 06:06 12:50
Mars 20:36 04:03 11:30
Jupiter 17:09 00:40 08:11
Saturn 12:58 18:29 23:59
All times shown in EST.

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

14 Apr 2014  –  1 Ceres at opposition
24 Jul 2015  –  1 Ceres at opposition
20 Oct 2016  –  1 Ceres at opposition
30 Jan 2018  –  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.

Share