Conjunction of Mercury and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mercury and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 7'59" to the north of Uranus.

From Fairfield however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be 1° below the horizon at dawn.

Mercury will be at mag 0.1, and Uranus at mag 5.9, both in the constellation Capricornus.

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 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 21h40m00s 14°32'S Capricornus 0.1 7"3
Uranus 21h40m00s 14°40'S Capricornus 5.9 3"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 27° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 29 Sep 2024

The sky on 29 September 2024
Sunrise
06:45
Sunset
18:37
Twilight ends
20:09
Twilight begins
05:13


Waning Crescent

6%

26 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:40 12:40 18:40
Venus 09:25 14:37 19:49
Moon 03:31 10:38 17:33
Mars 23:46 07:18 14:49
Jupiter 22:10 05:38 13:06
Saturn 17:46 23:20 04:54
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

26 Oct 2000  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
29 May 2001  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
15 Aug 2001  –  Uranus at opposition
30 Oct 2001  –  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.

Share