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 2°20' to the north of 136199 Eris.

From South El Monte , the pair will become visible at around 18:23 (PDT), 52° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 23:01.

1 Ceres will be at mag 8.9, and 136199 Eris at mag 18.6, both in the constellation Pisces.

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 01h52m30s 5°42'N Pisces 8.9 0"0
136199 Eris 01h52m30s 3°21'N Pisces 18.6 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 74° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 15 Aug 2025

The sky on 15 August 2025
Sunrise
06:11
Sunset
19:38
Twilight ends
21:09
Twilight begins
04:39


Waning Gibbous

50%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:51 11:42 18:33
Venus 03:26 10:31 17:36
Moon 22:51 05:54 13:06
Mars 09:35 15:33 21:31
Jupiter 03:08 10:17 17:25
Saturn 21:24 03:22 09:19
All times shown in PDT.

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

21 Oct 2039  –  136199 Eris at opposition
21 Oct 2040  –  136199 Eris at opposition
21 Oct 2041  –  136199 Eris at opposition
22 Oct 2042  –  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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