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 6°17' to the north of 136199 Eris.

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 17:50 (EDT), 44° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 23:29.

1 Ceres will be at mag 8.7 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 01h41m30s 3°37'N Pisces 8.7 0"0
136199 Eris 01h41m30s 2°40'S Cetus 18.7 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 87° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 17 Jan 2017

The sky on 17 January 2017
Sunrise
07:08
Sunset
16:39
Twilight ends
18:18
Twilight begins
05:28


Waning Gibbous

67%

19 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:32 10:10 14:48
Venus 09:17 14:57 20:38
Moon 21:28 03:54 10:11
Mars 09:36 15:25 21:15
Jupiter 23:45 05:20 10:56
Saturn 04:48 09:25 14:02
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

16 Oct 2016  –  136199 Eris at opposition
16 Oct 2017  –  136199 Eris at opposition
17 Oct 2018  –  136199 Eris at opposition
17 Oct 2019  –  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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