Conjunction of Venus and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 4'24" to the south of Uranus.

From Fairfield however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 19° from it.

Venus will be at mag -3.9, and Uranus at mag 5.9, both in the constellation 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 Venus 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
Venus 01h41m10s 9°51'N Pisces -3.9 10"5
Uranus 01h41m10s 9°56'N Pisces 5.9 3"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 19° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 28 Mar 2018

The sky on 28 March 2018
Sunrise
06:41
Sunset
19:13
Twilight ends
20:47
Twilight begins
05:07


Waxing Gibbous

94%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:43 13:17 19:52
Venus 07:30 14:08 20:45
Moon 16:07 23:05 05:54
Mars 02:21 06:55 11:29
Jupiter 22:50 03:51 08:52
Saturn 02:27 07:06 11:46
All times shown in EDT.

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

02 Jan 2018  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
07 Aug 2018  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
23 Oct 2018  –  Uranus at opposition
06 Jan 2019  –  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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