Mars and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 8°06' to the north of 1 Ceres.
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 4° above the horizon at dawn.
Mars will be at mag 1.1 in the constellation Pisces, and 1 Ceres at mag 9.3 in the neighbouring constellation of Cetus.
A graph of the angular separation between Mars 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 |
| Mars | 23h58m40s | 1°34'S | Pisces | 1.1 | 4"9 |
| 1 Ceres | 23h58m40s | 9°40'S | Cetus | 9.3 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 44° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.
The sky on 24 Apr 2026
| The sky on 24 April 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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66% 8 days old |
All times shown in PDT.
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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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| 08 May 2074 | – 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.