Conjunction of Ceres and Neptune

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


1 Ceres and Neptune will share the same right ascension, with 1 Ceres passing 9°38' to the north of Neptune.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 18:14 (PDT), 36° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 22:30, 87° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 04:04, when they sink below 21° above your north-western horizon.

1 Ceres will be at mag 7.1, and Neptune at mag 7.8, both in the constellation Gemini.

A graph of the angular separation between 1 Ceres and Neptune 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 07h03m20s 31°28'N Gemini 7.1 0"0
Neptune 07h03m20s 21°49'N Gemini 7.8 2"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 156° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 26 Apr 2026

The sky on 26 April 2026
Sunrise
06:05
Sunset
19:31
Twilight ends
21:02
Twilight begins
04:34


Waxing Gibbous

82%

9 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:26 11:43 17:59
Venus 07:30 14:35 21:39
Moon 15:06 21:33 03:50
Mars 05:07 11:21 17:35
Jupiter 10:41 17:50 00:58
Saturn 05:00 11:07 17:13
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

08 Jan 2073  –  1 Ceres at opposition
08 May 2074  –  1 Ceres at opposition
12 Aug 2075  –  1 Ceres at opposition
08 Nov 2076  –  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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