The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

Close approach of the Moon and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The Moon and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within 1°18' of each other. The Moon will be 4 days old.

From South El Monte , the pair will become visible at around 20:59 (PDT), 29° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 44 minutes after the Sun at 23:35.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

The Moon will be at mag -10.7; and Uranus will be at mag 5.6. Both objects will lie in the constellation Gemini.

They will be too widely separated to fit 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 07h12m20s 24°08'N Gemini -10.7 30'36"0
Uranus 07h11m10s 22°51'N Gemini 5.6 3"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 49° from the Sun, which is in Taurus at this time of year.

The sky on 15 Jun 2026

The sky on 15 June 2026
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
20:04
Twilight ends
21:49
Twilight begins
03:52

0-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

0%

0 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:27 14:37 21:47
Venus 08:30 15:35 22:40
Moon 05:58 13:37 21:13
Mars 03:36 10:27 17:19
Jupiter 08:06 15:10 22:14
Saturn 01:57 08:07 14:18
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

22 Mar 1953  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
29 Oct 1953  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
11 Jan 1954  –  Uranus at opposition
27 Mar 1954  –  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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South El Monte

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

34.05°N
118.05°W
PDT

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