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 7°17' to the north of 134340 Pluto.

From South El Monte , the pair will become visible at around 20:43 (PDT), 31° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 49 minutes after the Sun at 23:25.

1 Ceres will be at mag 8.8, and 134340 Pluto at mag 15.8, both in the constellation Gemini.

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 07h04m20s 28°36'N Gemini 8.8 0"0
134340 Pluto 07h04m20s 21°18'N Gemini 15.8 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 51° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 12 Aug 2026

The sky on 12 August 2026
Sunrise
06:08
Sunset
19:42
Twilight ends
21:14
Twilight begins
04:36


Waxing Crescent

0%

0 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:57 11:56 18:55
Venus 09:51 15:45 21:39
Moon 06:04 13:02 19:49
Mars 02:18 09:30 16:42
Jupiter 05:19 12:14 19:09
Saturn 22:13 04:24 10:35
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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11 Jan 2177  –  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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