The Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 34.8 arcminutes of each other. The Moon will be 3 days old.
From South El Monte however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 13° above the horizon at dusk.
The Moon will be at mag -10.1; and Uranus will be at mag 5.8. Both objects will lie in the constellation Sagittarius.
They 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 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 | 18h33m20s | 24°06'S | Sagittarius | -10.1 | 29'32"3 |
| Uranus | 18h33m00s | 23°32'S | Sagittarius | 5.8 | 3"4 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 37° from the Sun, which is in Libra at this time of year.
The sky on 31 Jul 2026
| The sky on 31 July 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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92% 17 days old |
All times shown in PDT.
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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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| 06 Jul 2159 | – Uranus at opposition |
| 21 Sep 2159 | – 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.