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 2'25" to the south of 136199 Eris.

From Cambridge however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 19° from it.

1 Ceres will be at mag 9.1, and 136199 Eris at mag 18.6, both in the constellation Pisces.

The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also 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 02h00m00s 5°00'N Pisces 9.1 0"0
136199 Eris 02h00m00s 5°03'N Pisces 18.6 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 19° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 27 Jul 2024

The sky on 27 July 2024
Sunrise
05:29
Sunset
20:08
Twilight ends
22:07
Twilight begins
03:30


Waning Gibbous

51%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:52 14:29 21:06
Venus 06:43 13:49 20:55
Moon 23:04 05:53 12:56
Mars 01:08 08:31 15:54
Jupiter 01:40 09:09 16:38
Saturn 22:04 03:43 09:22
All times shown in EDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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

23 Oct 2043  –  136199 Eris at opposition
22 Oct 2044  –  136199 Eris at opposition
23 Oct 2045  –  136199 Eris at opposition
23 Oct 2046  –  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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