Conjunction of Uranus and Neptune

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Uranus and Neptune will share the same right ascension, with Uranus passing 52' to the south of Neptune.

From South El Monte , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 02:01 (PDT) and reaching an altitude of 28° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:00.

Uranus will be at mag 5.8, and Neptune at mag 7.9, both in the constellation Capricornus.

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 Uranus and Neptune 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
Uranus 20h27m50s 19°41'S Capricornus 5.8 3"5
Neptune 20h27m50s 18°48'S Capricornus 7.9 2"2

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 87° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.

The sky on 6 Aug 2026

The sky on 6 August 2026
Sunrise
06:04
Sunset
19:48
Twilight ends
21:22
Twilight begins
04:29


Waning Crescent

41%

23 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:38 11:39 18:41
Venus 09:46 15:47 21:49
Moon 23:43 06:56 14:17
Mars 02:24 09:36 16:48
Jupiter 05:36 12:32 19:28
Saturn 22:36 04:48 11:00
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

13 Oct 2163  –  Neptune ends retrograde motion
08 May 2164  –  Neptune enters retrograde motion
27 Jul 2164  –  Neptune at opposition
15 Oct 2164  –  Neptune 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.

Share