Close approach of Jupiter and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Appulses feed

Tags: Appulse

The planets Jupiter and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 0.9 arcminutes of each other.

From South El Monte , the pair will become visible at around 20:53 (PDT), 43° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 00:33.

Jupiter will be at mag -2.0; and Uranus will be at mag 5.6. Both objects will lie in the constellation Gemini.

They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible through a pair of binoculars.

At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.

A graph of the angular separation between Jupiter and Uranus around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Jupiter 07h47m40s 21°39'N Gemini -2.0 34"2
Uranus 07h47m40s 21°39'N Gemini 5.6 3"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 64° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 12 Sep 2025

The sky on 12 September 2025
Sunrise
06:30
Sunset
19:02
Twilight ends
20:27
Twilight begins
05:05


Waning Gibbous

63%

20 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:28 12:47 19:05
Venus 04:15 11:00 17:44
Moon 21:29 04:44 12:09
Mars 09:11 14:49 20:28
Jupiter 01:42 08:49 15:55
Saturn 19:30 01:25 07:20
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

01 Apr 1955  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
08 Nov 1955  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
21 Jan 1956  –  Uranus at opposition
05 Apr 1956  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion

Image credit

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

Share