Close approach of Mars and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Appulses feed

Tags: Appulse

The planets Mars and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 13.3 arcminutes of each other.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 14° above the horizon at dawn.

Mars will be at mag 1.4; and Uranus will be at mag 5.8. Both objects will lie in the constellation Sagittarius.

They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also 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 Mars 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
Mars 18h35m20s 23°41'S Sagittarius 1.4 4"5
Uranus 18h35m10s 23°28'S Sagittarius 5.8 3"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 42° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 8 Jul 2025

The sky on 8 July 2025
Sunrise
05:45
Sunset
20:06
Twilight ends
21:49
Twilight begins
04:02


Waxing Gibbous

97%

13 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:51 14:39 21:28
Venus 03:00 09:55 16:50
Moon 18:55 23:34 04:13
Mars 10:13 16:38 23:02
Jupiter 05:00 12:11 19:21
Saturn 23:55 05:54 11:53
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

09 Sep 1989  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
13 Apr 1990  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
29 Jun 1990  –  Uranus at opposition
14 Sep 1990  –  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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