© NASA/Dawn 2015

1 Ceres at perihelion

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Dwarf Planets feed

Objects: 1 Ceres
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The sky at

1 Ceres's 4.6-year orbit around the Sun will carry it to its closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 2.55 AU.

In practice, however, 1 Ceres's orbit is very close to circular; its distance from the Sun only varies by about 17.2% between perihelion and aphelion. This means that the difference in the amount of heat and light it receives from the Sun between aphelion and perihelion is extremely small.

Finding 1 Ceres

1 Ceres's distance from the Sun doesn't affect its appearance. From Columbus, at the moment of perihelion it will not be readily observable since it will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 15° from it.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

A chart of the path of 1 Ceres across the sky in 1990 can be found here, and a chart of its rising and setting times here.

The position of 1 Ceres at the moment it passes perihelion will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
1 Ceres 10h50m20s 15°18'N Leo 8.6 0.0"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 26 Jun 2024

The sky on 26 June 2024
Sunrise
06:02
Sunset
21:04
Twilight ends
23:07
Twilight begins
03:59

20-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

71%

20 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:02 14:33 22:04
Venus 06:29 13:59 21:29
Moon 00:12 05:31 10:59
Mars 02:58 09:52 16:46
Jupiter 04:14 11:31 18:49
Saturn 00:52 06:34 12:17
All times shown in EDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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

18 Dec 1989  –  1 Ceres at opposition
16 Apr 1991  –  1 Ceres at opposition
25 Jul 1992  –  1 Ceres at opposition
21 Oct 1993  –  1 Ceres at opposition

Image credit

© NASA/Dawn 2015

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Columbus

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Longitude:
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39.96°N
83.00°W
EDT

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