Uranus's 84.1-year orbit around the Sun will carry it to its closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 18.28 AU.
In practice, however, Uranus's orbit is very close to circular; its distance from the Sun only varies by about 9.9% between perihelion and aphelion. This means that the difference in the amount of heat and light it receives from the Sun between aphelion and perihelion is extremely small.
Finding Uranus
Uranus's distance from the Sun doesn't affect its appearance. From Fairfield, at the moment of perihelion it will not be observable – it will reach its highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 2° above the horizon at dusk.
A chart of the path of Uranus across the sky in 2050 can be found here, and a chart of its rising and setting times here.
The position of Uranus at the moment it passes perihelion will be:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| Uranus | 11h17m00s | 5°24'N | Leo | 5.5 | 3.7" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The sky on 16 Jul 2024
| The sky on 16 July 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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78% 11 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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 May 2050 | – Uranus ends retrograde motion |
| 30 Dec 2050 | – Uranus enters retrograde motion |
| 13 Mar 2051 | – Uranus at opposition |
| 29 May 2051 | – Uranus ends retrograde motion |
Image credit
© NASA/Voyager 2