Conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Jupiter and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Jupiter passing 50' to the north of Uranus.

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

From Fairfield , the pair will be visible between 23:39 and 03:48. They will become accessible at around 23:39, when they rise to an altitude of 20° above your south-eastern horizon. They will reach their highest point in the sky at 01:43, 27° above your southern horizon. They will become inaccessible at around 03:48 when they sink below 20° above your south-western horizon.

Jupiter will be at mag -2.5, and Uranus at mag 5.5, both in the constellation Ophiuchus.

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 Jupiter 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
Jupiter 16h24m20s 20°41'S Ophiuchus -2.5 44"1
Uranus 16h24m20s 21°31'S Ophiuchus 5.5 3"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 167° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 15 May 2024

The sky on 15 May 2024
Sunrise
05:32
Sunset
20:04
Twilight ends
21:59
Twilight begins
03:37


Waxing Gibbous

57%

7 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:39 11:12 17:44
Venus 05:22 12:26 19:31
Moon 12:20 19:32 02:31
Mars 03:46 10:00 16:15
Jupiter 05:45 12:57 20:10
Saturn 02:54 08:34 14:14
All times shown in EDT.

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

14 Mar 1983  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
28 May 1983  –  Uranus at opposition
14 Aug 1983  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
18 Mar 1984  –  Uranus enters 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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