Conjunction of Mercury and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mercury and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 1'34" to the north 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 14° from it.

Mercury will be at mag -1.1, and Uranus at mag 6.0, both in the constellation Aquarius.

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 22h46m20s 8°33'S Aquarius -1.1 5"6
Uranus 22h46m20s 8°34'S Aquarius 6.0 3"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 14° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 15 Feb 2026

The sky on 15 February 2026
Sunrise
06:34
Sunset
17:35
Twilight ends
18:59
Twilight begins
05:10


Waning Crescent

1%

28 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:23 13:09 18:56
Venus 07:09 12:43 18:17
Moon 05:45 10:46 15:53
Mars 06:15 11:32 16:48
Jupiter 14:05 21:15 04:24
Saturn 08:14 14:11 20:08
All times shown in PST.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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

15 Nov 2005  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
19 Jun 2006  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
05 Sep 2006  –  Uranus at opposition
19 Nov 2006  –  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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