Conjunction of Uranus and Ceres

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Uranus and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Uranus passing 7°58' to the south of 1 Ceres.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 02:49 (PDT) – 3 hours and 45 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 31° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:30.

Uranus will be at mag 5.6, and 1 Ceres at mag 8.8, both in the constellation Virgo.

A graph of the angular separation between Uranus 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
Uranus 13h56m30s 11°21'S Virgo 5.6 3"6
1 Ceres 13h56m30s 3°23'S Virgo 8.8 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 42° from the Sun, which is in Ophiuchus at this time of year.

The sky on 18 Jul 2026

The sky on 18 July 2026
Sunrise
05:51
Sunset
20:02
Twilight ends
21:42
Twilight begins
04:10


Waxing Crescent

28%

4 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:24 12:17 19:09
Venus 09:24 15:51 22:18
Moon 10:40 16:49 22:49
Mars 02:47 09:55 17:02
Jupiter 06:30 13:29 20:29
Saturn 23:51 06:03 12:15
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

11 Jan 2142  –  1 Ceres at opposition
11 May 2143  –  1 Ceres at opposition
14 Aug 2144  –  1 Ceres at opposition
11 Nov 2145  –  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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