Conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Jupiter and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Jupiter passing 31' to the south of Uranus.

From Jacksonville 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.

Jupiter will be at mag -2.0, and Uranus at mag 5.8, both in the constellation Aries.

The pair will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Jupiter 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
Jupiter 03h16m20s 17°20'N Aries -2.0 32"4
Uranus 03h16m20s 17°51'N Aries 5.8 3"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 20° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 20 Apr 2024

The sky on 20 April 2024
Sunrise
06:51
Sunset
19:57
Twilight ends
21:22
Twilight begins
05:26


Waxing Gibbous

90%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:13 12:31 18:48
Venus 06:24 12:41 18:57
Moon 17:12 23:29 05:39
Mars 05:09 11:02 16:54
Jupiter 08:00 14:45 21:30
Saturn 04:53 10:38 16:23
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

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01 Sep 2024  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
16 Nov 2024  –  Uranus at opposition
30 Jan 2025  –  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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