Conjunction of Ceres and Makemake

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


1 Ceres and 136472 Makemake will share the same right ascension, with 1 Ceres passing 7°09' to the south of 136472 Makemake.

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 19° above the horizon at dawn.

1 Ceres will be at mag 8.9, and 136472 Makemake at mag 16.9, both in the constellation Libra.

A graph of the angular separation between 1 Ceres and 136472 Makemake 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 15h55m10s 16°01'S Libra 8.9 0"0
136472 Makemake 15h55m10s 8°52'S Libra 16.9 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 30° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 30 Apr 2026

The sky on 30 April 2026
Sunrise
06:01
Sunset
19:34
Twilight ends
21:07
Twilight begins
04:29


Waxing Gibbous

99%

13 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:29 11:53 18:18
Venus 07:31 14:39 21:47
Moon 19:04 00:22 05:36
Mars 04:59 11:17 17:34
Jupiter 10:28 17:36 00:45
Saturn 04:46 10:53 16:59
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

18 May 2078  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
19 May 2079  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
20 May 2080  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
21 May 2081  –  136472 Makemake 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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