Close approach of M44 and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Appulses feed

Tags: Appulse

M44 and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 55.5 arcminutes of each other.

From South El Monte , the pair will become visible at around 20:23 (PDT), 74° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 02:53.

M44 will be at mag 3.1; and Uranus will be at mag 5.5. Both objects will lie in the constellation Cancer.

They 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 M44 and Uranus around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
M44 08h40m20s 19°40'N Cancer 3.1 108'36"0
Uranus 08h42m20s 18°53'N Cancer 5.5 3"8

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 102° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 14 Mar 2026

The sky on 14 March 2026
Sunrise
07:01
Sunset
18:58
Twilight ends
20:21
Twilight begins
05:38


Waning Crescent

18%

25 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:17 12:04 17:52
Venus 07:49 14:00 20:11
Moon 04:41 09:36 14:36
Mars 06:29 12:07 17:45
Jupiter 13:15 20:25 03:35
Saturn 07:36 13:36 19:37
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.

Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Share