The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Conjunction of Ceres and Pluto

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed

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The sky at

1 Ceres and 134340 Pluto will share the same right ascension, with 1 Ceres passing 7°44' to the north of 134340 Pluto.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:49 (PDT), 41° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 18:13, 41° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 21:35, when they sink below 21° above your south-western horizon.

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1 Ceres will be at mag 8.8, and 134340 Pluto at mag 16.2, both in the constellation Cetus.

A graph of the angular separation between 1 Ceres and 134340 Pluto 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 00h35m50s 6°23'S Cetus 8.8 0"0
134340 Pluto 00h35m50s 14°07'S Cetus 16.2 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 94° from the Sun, which is in Sagittarius at this time of year.

The sky on 20 Jun 2026

The sky on 20 June 2026
Sunrise
05:38
Sunset
20:06
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:53

6-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

46%

6 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:29 14:34 21:39
Venus 08:39 15:40 22:40
Moon 11:52 18:12 00:22
Mars 03:28 10:22 17:17
Jupiter 07:51 14:54 21:58
Saturn 01:38 07:49 14:00
All times shown in PDT.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE440 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

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27 Sep 2072  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
28 Sep 2073  –  134340 Pluto at opposition
30 Sep 2074  –  134340 Pluto 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.

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South El Monte

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

34.05°N
118.05°W
PDT

Color scheme