Mercury and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 2°13' to the south of Uranus.
From Cambridge however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 21° from it.
Mercury will be at mag 1.3, and Uranus at mag 5.9, both in the constellation Pisces.
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 | 01h35m30s | 7°07'N | Pisces | 1.3 | 9"9 |
| Uranus | 01h35m30s | 9°21'N | Pisces | 5.9 | 3"3 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 22° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.
The sky on 7 May 2017
| The sky on 7 May 2017 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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94% 11 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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
| 29 Dec 2016 | – Uranus ends retrograde motion |
| 03 Aug 2017 | – Uranus enters retrograde motion |
| 19 Oct 2017 | – Uranus at opposition |
| 02 Jan 2018 | – 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.