Conjunction of Neptune and Ceres

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Neptune and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Neptune passing 9°48' to the south of 1 Ceres.

From South El Monte , the pair will become visible at around 19:59 (PDT), 87° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 03:37.

Neptune will be at mag 7.9, and 1 Ceres at mag 8.1, both in the constellation Gemini.

A graph of the angular separation between Neptune 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
Neptune 06h59m40s 21°56'N Gemini 7.9 2"2
1 Ceres 06h59m40s 31°44'N Gemini 8.1 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 103° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 23 Jun 2026

The sky on 23 June 2026
Sunrise
05:38
Sunset
20:06
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:53


Waxing Gibbous

75%

9 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:27 14:29 21:31
Venus 08:44 15:42 22:39
Moon 14:52 20:20 01:41
Mars 03:23 10:19 17:16
Jupiter 07:42 14:45 21:48
Saturn 01:27 07:38 13:49
All times shown in PDT.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE440 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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