Conjunction of Mars and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 22' 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 be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 02:27 (PDT) – 3 hours and 58 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 26° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:25.

Mars will be at mag 0.5, and Uranus at mag 5.8, both in the constellation Sagittarius.

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 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:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Mars 19h35m40s 22°26'S Sagittarius 0.5 7"5
Uranus 19h35m40s 22°03'S Sagittarius 5.8 3"5

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 83° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 4 Aug 2026

The sky on 4 August 2026
Sunrise
06:02
Sunset
19:50
Twilight ends
21:24
Twilight begins
04:27


Waning Gibbous

59%

21 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:35 11:36 18:37
Venus 09:44 15:48 21:53
Moon 22:35 05:13 12:00
Mars 02:26 09:38 16:49
Jupiter 05:42 12:38 19:34
Saturn 22:44 04:56 11:08
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.

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24 Sep 2160  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
28 Apr 2161  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
14 Jul 2161  –  Uranus at opposition
29 Sep 2161  –  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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