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 6°27' to the north of 136472 Makemake.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will lie so far south that they will never rise more than 21° above the horizon.

1 Ceres will be at mag 9.2, and 136472 Makemake at mag 16.4, both in the constellation Sagittarius.

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 18h50m50s 28°15'S Sagittarius 9.2 0"0
136472 Makemake 18h50m50s 34°43'S Sagittarius 16.4 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 50° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.

The sky on 8 Jul 2026

The sky on 8 July 2026
Sunrise
05:45
Sunset
20:06
Twilight ends
21:49
Twilight begins
04:01


Waning Crescent

38%

23 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:29 13:21 20:12
Venus 09:09 15:49 22:29
Moon 00:33 07:16 14:09
Mars 03:01 10:05 17:08
Jupiter 06:59 14:00 21:00
Saturn 00:29 06:41 12:53
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.

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06 Jul 2126  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
07 Jul 2127  –  136472 Makemake at opposition
07 Jul 2128  –  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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