Conjunction of Ceres and Eris

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


1 Ceres and 136199 Eris will share the same right ascension, with 1 Ceres passing 7°14' to the south of 136199 Eris.

From South El Monte , the pair will become visible at around 18:40 (PDT), 47° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 22:36.

1 Ceres will be at mag 9.0 in the constellation Cetus, and 136199 Eris at mag 18.2 in the neighbouring constellation of Aries.

A graph of the angular separation between 1 Ceres and 136199 Eris 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 02h19m30s 9°28'N Cetus 9.0 0"0
136199 Eris 02h19m30s 16°42'N Aries 18.2 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 59° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 20 Aug 2026

The sky on 20 August 2026
Sunrise
06:14
Sunset
19:33
Twilight ends
21:02
Twilight begins
04:44


Waxing Gibbous

64%

9 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:39 12:28 19:16
Venus 09:56 15:40 21:23
Moon 14:32 19:17 00:00
Mars 02:09 09:21 16:33
Jupiter 04:56 11:49 18:43
Saturn 21:41 03:52 10:03
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

01 Nov 2085  –  136199 Eris at opposition
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02 Nov 2087  –  136199 Eris at opposition
01 Nov 2088  –  136199 Eris 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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