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 30' to the north of 136199 Eris.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 20° above the horizon at dusk.

1 Ceres will be at mag 9.1, and 136199 Eris at mag 18.5, both in the constellation Pisces.

The pair will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably 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 01h58m10s 6°28'N Pisces 9.1 0"0
136199 Eris 01h58m10s 5°57'N Pisces 18.5 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 35° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 20 Mar 2026

The sky on 20 March 2026
Sunrise
06:53
Sunset
19:03
Twilight ends
20:27
Twilight begins
05:29


Waxing Crescent

6%

2 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:54 11:36 17:18
Venus 07:44 14:04 20:23
Moon 07:42 14:22 21:12
Mars 06:18 12:01 17:44
Jupiter 12:52 20:02 03:12
Saturn 07:14 13:15 19:17
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

23 Oct 2048  –  136199 Eris at opposition
23 Oct 2049  –  136199 Eris at opposition
23 Oct 2050  –  136199 Eris at opposition
24 Oct 2051  –  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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