Conjunction of Venus and Ceres

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 40' to the north of 1 Ceres.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 16° from it.

Venus will be at mag -3.9, and 1 Ceres at mag 8.9, both in the constellation Sagittarius.

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 Venus 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
Venus 17h54m20s 23°09'S Sagittarius -3.9 10"3
1 Ceres 17h54m20s 23°50'S Sagittarius 8.9 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 16° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 2 Apr 2026

The sky on 2 April 2026
Sunrise
06:35
Sunset
19:13
Twilight ends
20:38
Twilight begins
05:10


Waning Gibbous

98%

15 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:32 11:14 16:57
Venus 07:35 14:12 20:49
Moon 19:14 00:59 06:37
Mars 05:53 11:47 17:41
Jupiter 12:04 19:14 02:23
Saturn 06:27 12:30 18:34
All times shown in PDT.

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

14 Apr 2060  –  1 Ceres at opposition
24 Jul 2061  –  1 Ceres at opposition
21 Oct 2062  –  1 Ceres at opposition
31 Jan 2064  –  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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