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°19' to the north of 136199 Eris.

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 18:08 (EDT), 46° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 22:56.

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 01h54m40s 5°53'N Pisces 8.9 0"0
136199 Eris 01h54m40s 3°33'N Pisces 18.6 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 73° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 2 Jul 2024

The sky on 2 July 2024
Sunrise
05:09
Sunset
20:24
Twilight ends
22:37
Twilight begins
02:55


Waning Crescent

10%

26 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:39 14:09 21:38
Venus 05:45 13:20 20:55
Moon 01:56 09:40 17:38
Mars 01:54 08:58 16:02
Jupiter 03:00 10:26 17:51
Saturn 23:43 05:23 11:04
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

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