Conjunction of Mars and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 55' to the south of Uranus.

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

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 15° above the horizon at dusk.

Mars will be at mag 1.3, and Uranus at mag 5.6, both in the constellation Virgo.

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 13h51m30s 11°51'S Virgo 1.3 5"0
Uranus 13h51m30s 10°56'S Virgo 5.6 3"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 55° from the Sun, which is in Leo at this time of year.

The sky on 29 Mar 2026

The sky on 29 March 2026
Sunrise
06:41
Sunset
19:10
Twilight ends
20:34
Twilight begins
05:16


Waxing Gibbous

94%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:36 11:17 16:57
Venus 07:38 14:09 20:41
Moon 16:10 22:50 05:20
Mars 06:01 11:52 17:42
Jupiter 12:19 19:28 02:38
Saturn 06:41 12:44 18:47
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.

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11 Feb 2060  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
25 Apr 2060  –  Uranus at opposition
11 Jul 2060  –  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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