The Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 24.8 arcminutes of each other. The Moon will be 22 days old.
From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 00:22 (PDT) and reaching an altitude of 42° above the southern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:42.
The Moon will be at mag -12.0; and Uranus will be at mag 5.5. Both objects will lie in the constellation Virgo.
They 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 the Moon and Uranus around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 14h20m00s | 13°53'S | Virgo | -12.0 | 32'01"6 |
| Uranus | 14h20m30s | 13°29'S | Virgo | 5.5 | 3"8 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 87° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.
The sky on 22 Jul 2026
| The sky on 22 July 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
65% 8 days old |
All times shown in PDT.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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
| 08 Jul 2143 | – Uranus ends retrograde motion |
| 12 Feb 2144 | – Uranus enters retrograde motion |
| 26 Apr 2144 | – Uranus at opposition |
| 13 Jul 2144 | – 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.