Conjunction of Mars and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 59' to the north of Uranus.

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

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 00:12 (PDT) and reaching an altitude of 69° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:08.

Mars will be at mag 0.6, and Uranus at mag 5.5, both in the constellation Cancer.

The pair will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably 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 08h58m40s 18°46'N Cancer 0.6 7"3
Uranus 08h58m40s 17°47'N Cancer 5.5 3"8

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 87° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.

The sky on 13 Mar 2026

The sky on 13 March 2026
Sunrise
07:03
Sunset
18:57
Twilight ends
20:21
Twilight begins
05:39


Waning Crescent

26%

24 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:22 12:11 18:00
Venus 07:50 14:00 20:09
Moon 04:00 08:45 13:33
Mars 06:31 12:08 17:45
Jupiter 13:19 20:29 03:38
Saturn 07:39 13:40 19:40
All times shown in PDT.

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

10 Apr 2041  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
17 Nov 2041  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
30 Jan 2042  –  Uranus at opposition
15 Apr 2042  –  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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