1 Ceres at perihelion

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Dwarf Planets feed


Objects: 1 Ceres

1 Ceres's 4.6-year orbit around the Sun will carry it to its closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 2.55 AU.

In practice, however, 1 Ceres's orbit is very close to circular; its distance from the Sun only varies by about 17.2% between perihelion and aphelion. This means that the difference in the amount of heat and light it receives from the Sun between aphelion and perihelion is extremely small.

Finding 1 Ceres

1 Ceres's distance from the Sun doesn't affect its appearance. From Cambridge, at the moment of perihelion it will not be observable – it will reach its highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 7° above the horizon at dusk.

A chart of the path of 1 Ceres across the sky in 2027 can be found here, and a chart of its rising and setting times here.

The position of 1 Ceres at the moment it passes perihelion will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
1 Ceres 09h45m20s 21°38'N Leo 8.7 0.0"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 13 Jul 2027

The sky on 13 July 2027
Sunrise
05:16
Sunset
20:20
Twilight ends
22:28
Twilight begins
03:07


Waxing Gibbous

82%

9 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 03:58 11:20 18:43
Venus 04:38 12:13 19:49
Moon 16:38 21:03 01:23
Mars 11:07 17:14 23:20
Jupiter 08:24 15:17 22:10
Saturn 00:30 07:03 13:36
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

07 Jan 2027  –  1 Ceres at opposition
06 May 2028  –  1 Ceres at opposition
10 Aug 2029  –  1 Ceres at opposition
07 Nov 2030  –  1 Ceres at opposition

Image credit

© NASA/Dawn 2015

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