Conjunction of Mercury and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mercury and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 1°20' to the south of Uranus.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 20° from it.

Mercury will be at mag -0.3, and Uranus at mag 5.8, both in the constellation Sagittarius.

The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Mercury 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
Mercury 18h37m20s 24°49'S Sagittarius -0.3 7"3
Uranus 18h37m20s 23°28'S Sagittarius 5.8 3"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 20° from the Sun, which is in Ophiuchus at this time of year.

The sky on 23 Aug 2025

The sky on 23 August 2025
Sunrise
06:16
Sunset
19:29
Twilight ends
20:58
Twilight begins
04:47


Waxing Crescent

2%

30 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:53 11:44 18:35
Venus 03:39 10:40 17:41
Moon 06:42 13:21 19:50
Mars 09:27 15:20 21:13
Jupiter 02:44 09:52 17:00
Saturn 20:52 02:49 08:45
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

14 Sep 1990  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
18 Apr 1991  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
03 Jul 1991  –  Uranus at opposition
19 Sep 1991  –  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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