Mercury and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 5°45' to the north of 1 Ceres.
From Columbus however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be 5° below the horizon at dawn.
Mercury will be at mag 0.0, and 1 Ceres at mag 9.2, both in the constellation Aquarius.
A graph of the angular separation between Mercury 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 |
| Mercury | 22h02m40s | 13°30'S | Aquarius | 0.0 | 6"5 |
| 1 Ceres | 22h02m40s | 19°15'S | Aquarius | 9.2 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 26° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.
The sky on 17 May 2024
| The sky on 17 May 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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70% 9 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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.
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| 12 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.