The planets Saturn and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within 1°03' of each other.
From Cambridge however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 16° above the horizon at dusk.
Saturn will be at mag 0.3; and Uranus will be at mag 5.7. Both objects will lie in the constellation Sagittarius.
They will be too widely separated to fit 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 Saturn 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 |
| Saturn | 17h51m40s | 22°35'S | Sagittarius | 0.3 | 15"8 |
| Uranus | 17h51m20s | 23°38'S | Sagittarius | 5.7 | 3"5 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 60° from the Sun, which is in Virgo at this time of year.
The sky on 10 Oct 2024
| The sky on 10 October 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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58% 8 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.
Related news
| 05 Sep 1988 | – Uranus ends retrograde motion |
| 09 Apr 1989 | – Uranus enters retrograde motion |
| 24 Jun 1989 | – Uranus at opposition |
| 09 Sep 1989 | – 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.