Conjunction of Mars and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 20' to the north of Uranus.

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

From Columbus , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 01:57 (EDT) and reaching an altitude of 25° above the southern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:42.

Mars will be at mag 0.5, and Uranus at mag 5.6, both in the constellation Ophiuchus.

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 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 17h27m10s 22°57'S Ophiuchus 0.5 7"7
Uranus 17h27m10s 23°17'S Ophiuchus 5.6 3"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 90° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 28 Jun 2024

The sky on 28 June 2024
Sunrise
06:03
Sunset
21:04
Twilight ends
23:07
Twilight begins
04:00


Waning Crescent

41%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:13 14:41 22:10
Venus 06:33 14:02 21:31
Moon 01:03 07:08 13:25
Mars 02:55 09:50 16:45
Jupiter 04:08 11:25 18:43
Saturn 00:44 06:26 12:09
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

22 Aug 1985  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
27 Mar 1986  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
11 Jun 1986  –  Uranus at opposition
27 Aug 1986  –  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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