Mars and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 9°33' to the north of 1 Ceres.
From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:49 (PDT), 29° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 18:14, 29° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 20:24, when they sink below 21° above your south-western horizon.
Mars will be at mag -0.4 in the constellation Capricornus, and 1 Ceres at mag 8.9 in the neighbouring constellation of Piscis Austrinus.
A graph of the angular separation between Mars 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 |
| Mars | 21h29m20s | 16°59'S | Capricornus | -0.4 | 10"7 |
| 1 Ceres | 21h29m20s | 26°33'S | Piscis Austrinus | 8.9 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 96° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.
The sky on 22 Jul 2026
| The sky on 22 July 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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65% 8 days old |
All times shown in PDT.
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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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Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.