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

Close approach of Mars and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
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The sky at

The planets Mars and Uranus will make a close approach, passing within a mere 20.7 arcminutes of each other.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 01:17 (EDT) and reaching an altitude of 23° above the southern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 04:53.

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Mars will be at mag 0.5; and Uranus will be at mag 5.6. Both objects will lie in the constellation Ophiuchus.

They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible through a pair of binoculars.

At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.

A graph of the angular separation between Mars 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
Mars 17h27m20s 22°57'S Ophiuchus 0.5 7"7
Uranus 17h27m10s 23°17'S Ophiuchus 5.6 3"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 90° from the Sun, which is in Pisces at this time of year.

The sky on 17 Jun 2024

The sky on 17 June 2024
Sunrise
05:04
Sunset
20:23
Twilight ends
22:38
Twilight begins
02:49

11-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

80%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:16 12:59 20:43
Venus 05:20 12:59 20:38
Moon 16:10 21:21 02:22
Mars 02:25 09:15 16:05
Jupiter 03:48 11:11 18:34
Saturn 00:41 06:22 12:02
All times shown in EDT.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 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 Aug 1985  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
27 Mar 1986  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
11 Jun 1986  –  Uranus at opposition
27 Aug 1986  –  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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Cambridge

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42.38°N
71.11°W
EDT

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