Conjunction of Jupiter and Ceres

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Jupiter and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Jupiter passing 2°51' to the north of 1 Ceres.

From Jacksonville however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 18° above the horizon at dusk.

Jupiter will be at mag -1.9, and 1 Ceres at mag 9.2, both in the constellation Ophiuchus.

The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Jupiter 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
Jupiter 17h23m30s 22°57'S Ophiuchus -1.9 33"1
1 Ceres 17h23m30s 25°49'S Ophiuchus 9.2 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 51° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 24 Oct 2019

The sky on 24 October 2019
Sunrise
07:32
Sunset
18:46
Twilight ends
20:07
Twilight begins
06:11


Waning Crescent

16%

26 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 09:32 14:40 19:49
Venus 09:03 14:23 19:43
Moon 03:26 10:12 16:51
Mars 06:12 12:04 17:57
Jupiter 11:33 16:38 21:44
Saturn 13:11 18:18 23:25
All times shown in EDT.

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

29 May 2019  –  1 Ceres at opposition
28 Aug 2020  –  1 Ceres at opposition
26 Nov 2021  –  1 Ceres at opposition
21 Mar 2023  –  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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