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 8°18' to the south of 136199 Eris.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 00:21 (PDT) and reaching an altitude of 52° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 04:44.

1 Ceres will be at mag 8.9, and 136199 Eris at mag 18.4, both in the constellation Cetus.

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 02h09m40s 1°43'N Cetus 8.9 0"0
136199 Eris 02h09m40s 10°02'N Cetus 18.4 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 90° from the Sun, which is in Cancer at this time of year.

The sky on 3 Apr 2026

The sky on 3 April 2026
Sunrise
06:34
Sunset
19:13
Twilight ends
20:39
Twilight begins
05:09


Waning Gibbous

95%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:31 11:14 16:57
Venus 07:35 14:13 20:51
Moon 20:14 01:43 07:04
Mars 05:52 11:46 17:41
Jupiter 12:00 19:10 02:19
Saturn 06:23 12:27 18:30
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

26 Oct 2061  –  136199 Eris at opposition
26 Oct 2062  –  136199 Eris at opposition
27 Oct 2063  –  136199 Eris at opposition
26 Oct 2064  –  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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