Saturn and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Saturn passing 52' to the south of 1 Ceres.
From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 00:40 (EDT) and reaching an altitude of 50° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:24.
Saturn will be at mag -0.1, and 1 Ceres at mag 8.8, both in the constellation Gemini.
The pair will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.
A graph of the angular separation between Saturn 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 |
| Saturn | 06h50m20s | 22°11'N | Gemini | -0.1 | 17"8 |
| 1 Ceres | 06h50m20s | 23°03'N | Gemini | 8.8 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 69° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.
The sky on 1 Oct 2024
| The sky on 1 October 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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0% 28 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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
| 03 Oct 2002 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 08 Jan 2004 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 07 May 2005 | – 1 Ceres at opposition |
| 11 Aug 2006 | – 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.