Conjunction of Mercury and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mercury and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 3'50" to the south of Uranus.

From South El Monte however, the pair will not be readily observable since they will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 12° from it.

Mercury will be at mag -1.2, and Uranus at mag 6.0, both in the constellation Aquarius.

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 Mercury 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
Mercury 23h01m30s 7°06'S Aquarius -1.2 5"5
Uranus 23h01m30s 7°02'S Aquarius 6.0 3"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 12° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 10 May 2026

The sky on 10 May 2026
Sunrise
05:52
Sunset
19:42
Twilight ends
21:18
Twilight begins
04:16


Waning Crescent

35%

23 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:42 12:29 19:16
Venus 07:37 14:52 22:06
Moon 02:13 07:40 13:14
Mars 04:40 11:06 17:31
Jupiter 09:56 17:03 00:11
Saturn 04:09 10:17 16:25
All times shown in PDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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

20 Nov 2090  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
23 Jun 2091  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
10 Sep 2091  –  Uranus at opposition
24 Nov 2091  –  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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