Conjunction of Mars and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 6'26" to the south of Uranus.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From Cambridge however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 10° above the horizon at dawn.

Mars will be at mag 1.3, and Uranus at mag 5.8, both in the constellation Taurus.

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 04h06m00s 20°35'N Taurus 1.3 4"4
Uranus 04h06m00s 20°41'N Taurus 5.8 3"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 38° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.

The sky on 4 Jul 2026

The sky on 4 July 2026
Sunrise
05:10
Sunset
20:24
Twilight ends
22:36
Twilight begins
02:57


Waning Gibbous

80%

19 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:27 13:38 20:49
Venus 08:40 15:40 22:40
Moon 22:47 04:04 09:31
Mars 02:37 10:01 17:25
Jupiter 06:41 14:04 21:27
Saturn 00:34 06:49 13:04
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

03 Feb 2026  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
10 Sep 2026  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
25 Nov 2026  –  Uranus at opposition
08 Feb 2027  –  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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