Conjunction of Mercury and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mercury and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 1°31' 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 15° from it.

Mercury will be at mag -0.7, and Uranus at mag 5.9, both in the constellation Aries.

The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will 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 02h20m20s 12°00'N Aries -0.7 5"5
Uranus 02h20m20s 13°31'N Aries 5.9 3"3

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 16° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 23 Jun 2026

The sky on 23 June 2026
Sunrise
05:38
Sunset
20:06
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:53


Waxing Gibbous

69%

8 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:27 14:29 21:31
Venus 08:44 15:42 22:39
Moon 14:52 20:20 01:41
Mars 03:23 10:19 17:16
Jupiter 07:42 14:45 21:48
Saturn 01:27 07:38 13:49
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 DE440 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

12 Jan 2104  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
16 Aug 2104  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
01 Nov 2104  –  Uranus at opposition
15 Jan 2105  –  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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