© 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 17.1% 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 San Diego, at the moment of perihelion it will become visible at around 20:27 (PDT), 78° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 03:01.

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 2018 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 08h58m30s 28°59'N Cancer 8.2 0.0"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 24 Apr 2018

The sky on 24 April 2018
Sunrise
06:06
Sunset
19:25
Twilight ends
20:53
Twilight begins
04:38

8-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

74%

8 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:05 11:10 17:16
Venus 07:28 14:27 21:26
Moon 14:13 21:02 03:44
Mars 01:06 06:06 11:06
Jupiter 20:31 01:50 07:09
Saturn 00:14 05:17 10:19
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

31 Jan 2018  –  1 Ceres at opposition
29 May 2019  –  1 Ceres at opposition
28 Aug 2020  –  1 Ceres at opposition
26 Nov 2021  –  1 Ceres at opposition

Image credit

© NASA/Dawn 2015

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San Diego

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

32.72°N
117.16°W
PDT

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