Neptune and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Neptune passing 4°32' to the south of 1 Ceres.
From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 01:19 (PDT) and reaching an altitude of 38° above the southern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:38.
Neptune will be at mag 8.0, and 1 Ceres at mag 8.7, both in the constellation Ophiuchus.
The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.
A graph of the angular separation between Neptune 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 |
| Neptune | 16h24m30s | 20°00'S | Ophiuchus | 8.0 | 2"2 |
| 1 Ceres | 16h24m30s | 15°27'S | Ophiuchus | 8.7 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 78° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.
The sky on 25 Sep 2025
| The sky on 25 September 2025 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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20% 4 days old |
All times shown in PDT.
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Source
The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 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
| 31 Jan 1972 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 28 May 1973 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 29 Aug 1974 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 27 Nov 1975 | – 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.