The planets Jupiter and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 45.2 arcminutes of each other.
From Fairfield , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 01:49 (EDT) and reaching an altitude of 25° above the southern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:38.
Jupiter will be at mag -2.0; and Uranus will be at mag 5.6. Both objects will lie in the constellation Ophiuchus.
They 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.
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 | 16h30m00s | 20°57'S | Ophiuchus | -2.0 | 35"3 |
| Uranus | 16h29m40s | 21°42'S | Ophiuchus | 5.6 | 3"6 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 80° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.
The sky on 28 Apr 2024
| The sky on 28 April 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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75% 20 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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.
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| 28 May 1983 | – Uranus at opposition |
| 14 Aug 1983 | – 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.