Venus and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 7°11' to the north of 1 Ceres.
From Cambridge however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 20° from it.
Venus will be at mag -3.9 in the constellation Pisces, and 1 Ceres at mag 9.2 in the neighbouring constellation of Cetus.
A graph of the angular separation between Venus 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 |
| Venus | 23h57m50s | 1°50'S | Pisces | -3.9 | 10"2 |
| 1 Ceres | 23h57m50s | 9°02'S | Cetus | 9.2 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 16° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.
The sky on 4 Apr 2016
| The sky on 4 April 2016 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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6% 26 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
| 25 Jul 2015 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 20 Oct 2016 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 31 Jan 2018 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 29 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.