Conjunction of Mercury and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mercury and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 2°39' to the north 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 20° from it.

Mercury will be at mag 0.1, 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 04h26m10s 24°17'N Taurus 0.1 7"7
Uranus 04h26m10s 21°37'N Taurus 5.8 3"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 21° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 7 May 2028

The sky on 7 May 2028
Sunrise
05:28
Sunset
19:50
Twilight ends
21:44
Twilight begins
03:35


Waxing Gibbous

99%

13 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:23 14:04 21:45
Venus 06:52 14:50 22:48
Moon 19:02 23:57 04:45
Mars 05:05 11:59 18:52
Jupiter 14:27 20:53 03:20
Saturn 05:04 11:45 18:26
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

12 Feb 2028  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
18 Sep 2028  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
03 Dec 2028  –  Uranus at opposition
16 Feb 2029  –  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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