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 1°45' 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 2° below the horizon at dawn.

1 Ceres will be at mag 9.2 in the constellation Pisces, and 136199 Eris at mag 18.7 in the neighbouring constellation of Cetus.

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 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 01h52m40s 3°04'N Pisces 9.2 0"0
136199 Eris 01h52m40s 1°19'N Cetus 18.7 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 42° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 31 May 2030

The sky on 31 May 2030
Sunrise
05:07
Sunset
20:13
Twilight ends
22:22
Twilight begins
02:59


Waning Crescent

0%

29 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:12 11:09 18:07
Venus 03:32 10:16 17:00
Moon 04:32 12:12 19:55
Mars 05:03 12:33 20:03
Jupiter 18:17 23:17 04:17
Saturn 04:45 11:58 19:11
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

19 Oct 2029  –  136199 Eris at opposition
19 Oct 2030  –  136199 Eris at opposition
20 Oct 2031  –  136199 Eris at opposition
19 Oct 2032  –  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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