Conjunction of Ceres and Pluto

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


1 Ceres and 134340 Pluto will share the same right ascension, with 1 Ceres passing 5°33' to the north of 134340 Pluto.

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 5° above the horizon at dusk.

1 Ceres will be at mag 9.2, and 134340 Pluto at mag 15.8, both in the constellation Aquarius.

A graph of the angular separation between 1 Ceres and 134340 Pluto 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 23h12m20s 14°02'S Aquarius 9.2 0"0
134340 Pluto 23h12m20s 19°35'S Aquarius 15.8 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 27° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 24 Mar 2026

The sky on 24 March 2026
Sunrise
06:48
Sunset
19:06
Twilight ends
20:30
Twilight begins
05:24


Waxing Crescent

41%

5 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:44 11:25 17:05
Venus 07:41 14:06 20:31
Moon 10:36 18:15 01:54
Mars 06:11 11:57 17:43
Jupiter 12:37 19:47 02:56
Saturn 06:59 13:02 19:04
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.

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06 Sep 2054  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
08 Sep 2055  –  134340 Pluto 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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