Conjunction of Venus and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 7'52" 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 be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 03:49 (PDT) – 3 hours and 10 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 26° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:00.

Venus will be at mag -4.1, and Uranus at mag 5.5, both in the constellation Leo.

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

A graph of the angular separation between Venus 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
Venus 11h00m20s 7°17'N Leo -4.1 15"6
Uranus 11h00m20s 7°09'N Leo 5.5 3"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 40° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.

The sky on 18 May 2026

The sky on 18 May 2026
Sunrise
05:46
Sunset
19:48
Twilight ends
21:27
Twilight begins
04:07


Waxing Crescent

7%

2 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:02 13:07 20:12
Venus 07:46 15:02 22:19
Moon 07:13 14:53 22:31
Mars 04:25 10:57 17:29
Jupiter 09:31 16:37 23:44
Saturn 03:40 09:49 15:57
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

13 May 1964  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
19 Dec 1964  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
03 Mar 1965  –  Uranus at opposition
18 May 1965  –  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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