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 8°44' 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 3° above the horizon at dusk.

1 Ceres will be at mag 9.2, and 134340 Pluto at mag 16.1, both in the constellation Cetus.

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 00h18m20s 6°24'S Cetus 9.2 0"0
134340 Pluto 00h18m20s 15°08'S Cetus 16.1 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 25° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 12 Apr 2026

The sky on 12 April 2026
Sunrise
06:22
Sunset
19:20
Twilight ends
20:48
Twilight begins
04:55


Waning Crescent

21%

25 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:26 11:19 17:11
Venus 07:31 14:20 21:10
Moon 03:45 09:02 14:26
Mars 05:34 11:37 17:39
Jupiter 11:29 18:38 01:47
Saturn 05:51 11:55 18:00
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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24 Sep 2069  –  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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