Conjunction of Mars and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 1°21' to the north of Uranus.

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

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 20:57 (EDT), 49° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 01:36.

Mars will be at mag 1.1, and Uranus at mag 5.5, both in the constellation Cancer.

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 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 08h05m00s 22°16'N Cancer 1.1 6"0
Uranus 08h05m00s 20°54'N Cancer 5.5 3"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 77° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 2 Jul 2024

The sky on 2 July 2024
Sunrise
05:09
Sunset
20:24
Twilight ends
22:37
Twilight begins
02:55


Waning Crescent

10%

26 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:39 14:09 21:38
Venus 05:45 13:20 20:55
Moon 01:56 09:40 17:38
Mars 01:54 08:58 16:02
Jupiter 03:00 10:26 17:51
Saturn 23:43 05:23 11:04
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

05 Apr 2040  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
12 Nov 2040  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
25 Jan 2041  –  Uranus at opposition
10 Apr 2041  –  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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