Mars and 1 Ceres will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 40' to the south of 1 Ceres.
From South El Monte , the pair will become visible at around 20:08 (PDT), 48° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 00:14.
Mars will be at mag 1.3, and 1 Ceres at mag 8.8, both in the constellation Taurus.
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 Mars 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 |
| Mars | 04h44m50s | 23°42'N | Taurus | 1.3 | 5"2 |
| 1 Ceres | 04h44m50s | 24°22'N | Taurus | 8.8 | 0"0 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 62° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.
The sky on 13 Apr 2026
| The sky on 13 April 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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14% 25 days old |
All times shown in PDT.
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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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| 03 Oct 2071 | – 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.