Conjunction of Mercury and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mercury and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 1°55' to the north 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 14° from it.

Mercury will be at mag -1.0, and Uranus at mag 5.8, both in the constellation Taurus.

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 04h10m00s 22°50'N Taurus -1.0 5"7
Uranus 04h10m00s 20°55'N Taurus 5.8 3"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 14° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 11 May 2027

The sky on 11 May 2027
Sunrise
05:36
Sunset
19:59
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:45


Waxing Crescent

38%

5 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:15 13:45 21:15
Venus 04:41 11:14 17:46
Moon 10:21 18:00 01:26
Mars 12:48 19:40 02:32
Jupiter 11:54 18:57 02:00
Saturn 04:34 10:59 17:24
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

08 Feb 2027  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
15 Sep 2027  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
30 Nov 2027  –  Uranus at opposition
12 Feb 2028  –  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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