Conjunction of Saturn and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Saturn and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Saturn passing 13' 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 evening sky, becoming accessible around 20:22 (PDT), 28° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 22:19, 34° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 01:09, when they sink below 21° above your south-western horizon.

Saturn will be at mag 0.1, and Uranus at mag 5.7, 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 19h57m20s 21°03'S Sagittarius 0.1 18"0
Uranus 19h57m20s 21°16'S Sagittarius 5.7 3"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 142° from the Sun, which is in Leo 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

21 Jul 2079  –  Uranus at opposition
06 Oct 2079  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
09 May 2080  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
25 Jul 2080  –  Uranus at opposition

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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