Mars and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 33' 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 , the pair will become visible at around 21:04 (PDT), 26° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 21 minutes after the Sun at 23:17.

Mars will be at mag 1.1, and Uranus at mag 5.5, 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:

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 70° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.

The sky on 16 Jul 2026

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.

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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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