Conjunction of Venus and Ceres

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 17' to the south of 1 Ceres.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 19° from it.

Venus will be at mag -3.9, and 1 Ceres at mag 8.8, both in the constellation Taurus.

The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Venus 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
Venus 05h20m20s 23°56'N Taurus -3.9 10"4
1 Ceres 05h20m20s 24°13'N Taurus 8.8 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 19° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 26 Jun 2026

The sky on 26 June 2026
Sunrise
05:39
Sunset
20:07
Twilight ends
21:52
Twilight begins
03:54


Waxing Gibbous

94%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:22 14:21 21:20
Venus 08:50 15:44 22:38
Moon 17:50 22:39 03:24
Mars 03:18 10:16 17:14
Jupiter 07:34 14:36 21:39
Saturn 01:15 07:27 13:38
All times shown in PDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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 Nov 2076  –  1 Ceres at opposition
25 Feb 2078  –  1 Ceres at opposition
19 Jun 2079  –  1 Ceres at opposition
15 Sep 2080  –  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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