© NASA/Dawn 2015

1 Ceres at aphelion

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 furthest point to the Sun – its aphelion – at a distance of 2.99 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 South El Monte, at the moment of aphelion it will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 19:03 (PDT), 27° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then reach its highest point in the sky at 19:41, 28° above your southern horizon. It will continue to be observable until around 21:43, when it sinks below 21° above your south-western horizon.

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 2006 can be found here, and a chart of its rising and setting times here.

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
1 Ceres 21h18m50s 27°32'S Microscopium 8.8 0.0"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 30 Jun 2025

The sky on 30 June 2025
Sunrise
05:41
Sunset
20:07
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:56

5-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

38%

5 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:44 14:43 21:42
Venus 03:01 09:51 16:40
Moon 11:11 17:34 23:48
Mars 10:22 16:52 23:22
Jupiter 05:24 12:34 19:45
Saturn 00:26 06:25 12:24
All times shown in PDT.

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

11 Aug 2006  –  1 Ceres at opposition
08 Nov 2007  –  1 Ceres at opposition
23 Feb 2009  –  1 Ceres at opposition
17 Jun 2010  –  1 Ceres at opposition

Image credit

© NASA/Dawn 2015

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South El Monte

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

34.05°N
118.05°W
PDT

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