Conjunction of Neptune and Ceres

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Neptune and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Neptune passing 7°38' to the north of 1 Ceres.

From Los Angeles however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 13° from it.

Neptune will be at mag 8.0, and 1 Ceres at mag 9.1, both in the constellation Aquarius.

A graph of the angular separation between Neptune 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
Neptune 22h42m30s 9°02'S Aquarius 8.0 2"2
1 Ceres 22h42m30s 16°40'S Aquarius 9.1 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 14° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 19 May 2025

The sky on 19 May 2025
Sunrise
05:46
Sunset
19:50
Twilight ends
21:29
Twilight begins
04:07


Waning Gibbous

53%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:13 12:00 18:46
Venus 03:40 09:53 16:07
Moon 01:14 06:23 11:39
Mars 11:16 18:10 01:04
Jupiter 07:29 14:39 21:50
Saturn 03:06 09:03 14:59
All times shown in PDT.

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

24 Jul 2015  –  1 Ceres at opposition
19 Oct 2016  –  1 Ceres at opposition
30 Jan 2018  –  1 Ceres at opposition
28 May 2019  –  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.

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