The Moon and 1 Ceres will make a close approach, passing within a mere 2.2 arcminutes of each other. The Moon will be 16 days old.
From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 20:09, when they reach an altitude of 21° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 01:08, 73° above your southern horizon. They will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:07, 34° above your western horizon.
The Moon will be at mag -12.6; and 1 Ceres will be at mag 7.4. Both objects will lie in the constellation Taurus.
They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible through a pair of binoculars.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and 1 Ceres around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 04h43m30s | 17°33'N | Taurus | -12.6 | 30'50"6 |
| 1 Ceres | 04h43m30s | 17°31'N | Taurus | 7.4 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 155° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.
The sky on 20 Aug 2026
| The sky on 20 August 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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62% 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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| 10 Jul 2185 | – 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.