1 Ceres and 136199 Eris will share the same right ascension, with 1 Ceres passing 2°50' to the north of 136199 Eris.
From Ashburn however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 19° above the horizon at dawn.
1 Ceres will be at mag 9.3, and 136199 Eris at mag 18.9, both in the constellation Cetus.
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 1 Ceres and 136199 Eris 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 |
| 1 Ceres | 01h45m30s | +00°28' | Cetus | 9.3 | 0"0 |
| 136199 Eris | 01h45m30s | -02°22' | Cetus | 18.9 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 71° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.
| The sky on 27 June 2016 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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45% 22 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.
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| 16 Oct 2015 | – 136199 Eris at opposition |
| 16 Oct 2016 | – 136199 Eris at opposition |
| 16 Oct 2017 | – 136199 Eris at opposition |
| 17 Oct 2018 | – 136199 Eris 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.