When will Ceres be closest to the Earth in 2009?

Where Ceres will be located on the night of February 25 at closest approach to the Earth. Still impossible to see without binoculars though.

The answer is here, amongst a lot of other good information:

February 25 — Largest asteroid/dwarf planet Ceres has closest opposition since 1857, reaches magnitude 6.9 in constellation Leo (won’t be closer for 2000+ years). Binoculars required.

To find out where Ceres is at the moment I always use Stellarium. It's not the snazziest program in the world when it comes to locating astronomical objects, but I prefer its simplicity and ease.

You might also have noticed that Venus is particularly high in the sky at the moment after sunset. It's going to continue to get higher until around Feb. 13 or so, after which it'll start dropping pretty rapidly. The last time Venus was that high in the evening sky it was summer, so with the late sunsets the planet stayed up until even around midnight. Of course that's what it looks like in the southern hemisphere right now.