Conjunction of Saturn and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Saturn and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Saturn passing 26' 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 however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 10° above the horizon at dawn.

Saturn will be at mag 0.5, and Uranus at mag 5.9, both in the constellation Sagittarius.

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 Saturn 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
Saturn 20h04m00s 20°27'S Sagittarius 0.5 15"4
Uranus 20h04m00s 20°53'S Sagittarius 5.9 3"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 40° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 30 Apr 2026

The sky on 30 April 2026
Sunrise
06:01
Sunset
19:34
Twilight ends
21:07
Twilight begins
04:29


Waxing Gibbous

99%

14 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:29 11:53 18:18
Venus 07:31 14:39 21:47
Moon 19:04 00:22 05:36
Mars 04:59 11:17 17:34
Jupiter 10:28 17:36 00:45
Saturn 04:46 10:53 16:59
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

02 Oct 2078  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
05 May 2079  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
21 Jul 2079  –  Uranus at opposition
06 Oct 2079  –  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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