Conjunction of Mars and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 36' to the north of Uranus.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From South El Monte , the pair will become visible at around 21:20 (PST), 28° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 34 minutes after the Sun at 23:42.

Mars will be at mag 1.5, and Uranus at mag 5.5, both in the constellation Leo.

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 Uranus 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 09h43m00s 15°04'N Leo 1.5 4"7
Uranus 09h43m00s 14°28'N Leo 5.5 3"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 57° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 27 Dec 2025

The sky on 27 December 2025
Sunrise
06:54
Sunset
16:49
Twilight ends
18:19
Twilight begins
05:24


Waxing Gibbous

63%

8 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:55 10:51 15:46
Venus 06:47 11:41 16:35
Moon 11:37 17:57 00:26
Mars 07:12 12:05 16:59
Jupiter 17:54 01:00 08:07
Saturn 11:20 17:12 23:04
All times shown in PST.

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

28 Apr 1961  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
05 Dec 1961  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
17 Feb 1962  –  Uranus at opposition
04 May 1962  –  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.

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