Conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Jupiter and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Jupiter passing 24' 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 02:32 (PDT) – 3 hours and 40 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 31° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:11.

Jupiter will be at mag -1.8, and Uranus at mag 5.5, both in the constellation Virgo.

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 Jupiter 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
Jupiter 11h54m10s 1°48'N Virgo -1.8 31"8
Uranus 11h54m10s 1°24'N Virgo 5.5 3"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 46° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.

The sky on 22 Mar 2026

The sky on 22 March 2026
Sunrise
06:50
Sunset
19:04
Twilight ends
20:28
Twilight begins
05:27


Waxing Crescent

21%

4 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:49 11:30 17:11
Venus 07:43 14:05 20:27
Moon 08:54 16:11 23:37
Mars 06:14 11:59 17:43
Jupiter 12:45 19:54 03:04
Saturn 07:07 13:08 19:10
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

29 May 2051  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
04 Jan 2052  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
17 Mar 2052  –  Uranus at opposition
02 Jun 2052  –  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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