Conjunction of Ceres and Pluto

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


1 Ceres and 134340 Pluto will share the same right ascension, with 1 Ceres passing 9°06' to the north of 134340 Pluto.

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 13° above the horizon at dawn.

1 Ceres will be at mag 9.2, and 134340 Pluto at mag 16.5, both in the constellation Cetus.

A graph of the angular separation between 1 Ceres and 134340 Pluto 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 02h24m50s 5°49'N Cetus 9.2 0"0
134340 Pluto 02h24m50s 3°16'S Cetus 16.5 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 56° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.

The sky on 17 Jun 2026

The sky on 17 June 2026
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
20:05
Twilight ends
21:50
Twilight begins
03:52


Waxing Crescent

17%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:29 14:37 21:45
Venus 08:34 15:37 22:40
Moon 08:27 15:43 22:50
Mars 03:32 10:25 17:18
Jupiter 08:00 15:04 22:07
Saturn 01:49 08:00 14:11
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

25 Oct 2098  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
26 Oct 2099  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
27 Oct 2100  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
28 Oct 2101  –  134340 Pluto 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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