Mars and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 1°43' to the north of Uranus.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:54 (EST), 60° above your southern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 17:55, 60° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 22:46, when they sink below 21° above your western horizon.

Mars will be at mag 0.2, and Uranus at mag 5.8, both in the constellation Aries.

The pair 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 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:

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 95° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 21 Jan 2021

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.

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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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