Conjunction of Mars and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 28' to the south 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.

Mars will be at mag 1.2 in the constellation Aquarius, and Uranus at mag 5.9 in the neighbouring constellation of Pisces.

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 Mars 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
Mars 23h40m10s 3°24'S Aquarius 1.2 4"3
Uranus 23h40m10s 2°56'S Pisces 5.9 3"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 31° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 7 Jul 2024

The sky on 7 July 2024
Sunrise
05:25
Sunset
20:27
Twilight ends
22:32
Twilight begins
03:19


Waxing Crescent

7%

2 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:15 14:31 21:47
Venus 06:08 13:35 21:03
Moon 06:44 14:31 22:08
Mars 01:56 09:01 16:07
Jupiter 02:57 10:19 17:42
Saturn 23:31 05:12 10:53
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

27 Nov 2008  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
01 Jul 2009  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
17 Sep 2009  –  Uranus at opposition
01 Dec 2009  –  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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