Conjunction of Saturn and Ceres

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Saturn and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Saturn passing 5°31' to the north 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 14° from it.

Saturn will be at mag 0.6, and 1 Ceres at mag 9.1, both in the constellation Capricornus.

A graph of the angular separation between Saturn 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
Saturn 20h23m20s 19°49'S Capricornus 0.6 15"2
1 Ceres 20h23m20s 25°20'S Capricornus 9.1 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 14° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 29 Jun 2026

The sky on 29 June 2026
Sunrise
05:40
Sunset
20:07
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:56


Waning Gibbous

99%

14 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:13 14:10 21:06
Venus 08:55 15:45 22:36
Moon 19:40 00:21 05:02
Mars 03:14 10:13 17:13
Jupiter 07:25 14:27 21:29
Saturn 01:04 07:15 13:27
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

19 Jun 2079  –  1 Ceres at opposition
15 Sep 2080  –  1 Ceres at opposition
18 Dec 2081  –  1 Ceres at opposition
16 Apr 2083  –  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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