Conjunction of Mercury and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mercury and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 14' to the south 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 17° from it.

Mercury will be at mag -0.7, and Uranus at mag 5.6, both in the constellation Leo.

The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also 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 09h42m30s 14°13'N Leo -0.7 6"7
Uranus 09h42m30s 14°27'N Leo 5.6 3"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 17° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.

The sky on 27 Jul 2024

The sky on 27 July 2024
Sunrise
05:29
Sunset
20:08
Twilight ends
22:07
Twilight begins
03:30


Waning Gibbous

51%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:52 14:29 21:06
Venus 06:43 13:49 20:55
Moon 23:04 05:53 12:56
Mars 01:08 08:31 15:54
Jupiter 01:40 09:09 16:38
Saturn 22:04 03:43 09:22
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

24 Apr 2044  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
01 Dec 2044  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
12 Feb 2045  –  Uranus at opposition
29 Apr 2045  –  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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