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 5°10' to the north of 136199 Eris.

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 19° above the horizon at dusk.

1 Ceres will be at mag 9.1 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 01h46m00s 4°57'N Pisces 9.1 0"0
136199 Eris 01h46m00s 0°13'S Cetus 18.7 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 41° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 6 Mar 2026

The sky on 6 March 2026
Sunrise
06:09
Sunset
17:39
Twilight ends
19:12
Twilight begins
04:36


Waning Gibbous

87%

17 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:57 11:54 17:51
Venus 06:49 12:48 18:47
Moon 20:21 01:51 07:12
Mars 05:47 11:07 16:28
Jupiter 12:14 19:49 03:24
Saturn 06:58 12:57 18:56
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

18 Oct 2025  –  136199 Eris at opposition
18 Oct 2026  –  136199 Eris at opposition
19 Oct 2027  –  136199 Eris at opposition
18 Oct 2028  –  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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