Conjunction of Mercury and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mercury and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mercury passing 32' 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 18° from it.

Mercury will be at mag -0.3, and Uranus at mag 5.9, both in the constellation Sagittarius.

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 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 19h41m30s 22°23'S Sagittarius -0.3 5"2
Uranus 19h41m30s 21°51'S Sagittarius 5.9 3"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 18° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 5 Aug 2026

The sky on 5 August 2026
Sunrise
06:03
Sunset
19:49
Twilight ends
21:23
Twilight begins
04:28


Waning Gibbous

53%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:36 11:38 18:39
Venus 09:45 15:48 21:51
Moon 23:06 06:02 13:07
Mars 02:25 09:37 16:49
Jupiter 05:39 12:35 19:31
Saturn 22:40 04:52 11:04
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

29 Sep 2161  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
02 May 2162  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
18 Jul 2162  –  Uranus at opposition
03 Oct 2162  –  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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