Conjunction of Mars and Ceres

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 8°18' to the south of 1 Ceres.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 00:54 (PDT) and reaching an altitude of 53° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:25.

Mars will be at mag 1.4 in the constellation Virgo, and 1 Ceres at mag 8.6 in the neighbouring constellation of Leo.

A graph of the angular separation between Mars and 1 Ceres 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
Mars 11h45m00s 3°27'N Virgo 1.4 5"1
1 Ceres 11h45m00s 11°45'N Leo 8.6 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 65° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.

The sky on 13 Jun 2026

The sky on 13 June 2026
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
20:03
Twilight ends
21:48
Twilight begins
03:52


Waning Crescent

1%

28 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:24 14:36 21:48
Venus 08:26 15:33 22:40
Moon 03:57 11:23 18:56
Mars 03:39 10:29 17:20
Jupiter 08:12 15:16 22:20
Saturn 02:04 08:15 14:26
All times shown in PDT.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE440 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.

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21 Mar 2046  –  1 Ceres at opposition
07 Jul 2047  –  1 Ceres at opposition
02 Oct 2048  –  1 Ceres 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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