© 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 2.54 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 Fairfield, at the moment of perihelion it will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 00:06 (EDT) and reaching an altitude of 57° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:52.

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 2022 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 12h06m40s 10°31'N Virgo 8.4 0.0"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 9 Dec 2022

The sky on 9 December 2022
Sunrise
07:04
Sunset
16:23
Twilight ends
18:02
Twilight begins
05:25

16-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

95%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:31 12:56 17:20
Venus 08:03 12:35 17:06
Moon 16:32 00:34 08:39
Mars 15:52 23:32 07:11
Jupiter 12:39 18:36 00:33
Saturn 11:05 16:10 21:15
All times shown in EST.

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

27 Nov 2021  –  1 Ceres at opposition
21 Mar 2023  –  1 Ceres at opposition
06 Jul 2024  –  1 Ceres at opposition
02 Oct 2025  –  1 Ceres at opposition

Image credit

© NASA/Dawn 2015

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Fairfield

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Longitude:
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41.14°N
73.26°W
EDT

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