Saturn and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Saturn passing 26' to the south of 1 Ceres.
From Cambridge however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 6° above the horizon at dusk.
Saturn will be at mag 0.5, and 1 Ceres at mag 9.0, both in the constellation Libra.
The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible through a pair of binoculars.
A graph of the angular separation between Saturn 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 |
| Saturn | 15h15m00s | 15°59'S | Libra | 0.5 | 15"5 |
| 1 Ceres | 15h15m00s | 15°32'S | Libra | 9.0 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 39° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.
The sky on 17 May 2024
| The sky on 17 May 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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71% 9 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
| 15 Apr 2014 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 25 Jul 2015 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 20 Oct 2016 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 31 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.