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°42' to the north of Uranus.

From Columbus however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 13° from it.

Mercury will be at mag -1.0, and Uranus at mag 5.7, 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 05h42m50s 25°15'N Taurus -1.0 5"5
Uranus 05h42m50s 23°32'N Taurus 5.7 3"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 13° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 3 Jun 2032

The sky on 3 June 2032
Sunrise
06:01
Sunset
20:55
Twilight ends
22:55
Twilight begins
04:01


Waning Crescent

17%

25 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:48 14:25 22:02
Venus 06:05 13:29 20:53
Moon 03:10 09:45 16:27
Mars 06:43 14:15 21:46
Jupiter 00:05 04:57 09:48
Saturn 06:52 14:16 21:40
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

29 Feb 2032  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
06 Oct 2032  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
20 Dec 2032  –  Uranus at opposition
05 Mar 2033  –  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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