Uranus is at opposition – the middle of its nearest and brightest weeks – on Monday, October 28, at 8 Universal Time, which is back in Sundat by American clocks.
See the end note about enlarging illustrations.
The precise time doesn’t matter for observation, and this evening scene will be little different for evenings before and after. It is drawn for an American location and a clock time that is 8 hours before the instant of opposition.
Rising into imaginary view is the anti-Sun, the point opposite to the Sun, and rising along with it, because at opposition, is Uranus. The remote planet is also in imaginary view, because its magnitude (astronomical brightness) is 5. That means it is about like the dimmest stars visible to the naked eye in fairly good conditions and higher in the sky. There are thousans of them, not shown in this picture.
Later at night when Uranus is in a higher darker sky, you may be able to find it with telescope or binocular.
This chart is ecliptic-based so as to follow the planet along its travels. So the mapping lines of right ascension and declination, which you may want to use for aiming the telescope, are slanting. The faintest stars are at about magnitude 7, dimmer than Uranus.
Uranus crossed the celestial equator into the north hemisphere of the sky in December 2007. In January of that year it was at southernmost latitude, which is why it is now traveling at half a degree south of the ecliptic, and it will be at ascending node in 2029. There is a great deal more about the fascinating geometry of its orbit in our book Uranus, Neptune, Plut: A Longer View.
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ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format. You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor. One way: right-click, and choose “View image”, then enlarge. Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it. On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers). Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.
I saw it last night and tonight using me vortex 8×36 monocular.its easy with any optical and I’ve even had it, when it’s higher up,in my Zeiss 5×10 miniquick monocular but by naked eye is really challenging.spotted quite a few planets tonight; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and of course Earth!the sunset was too bright to get Venus at the moment.
Have you tried for Neptune through the 8×36?
I’ve been following Uranus through 10×42 image-stabilized binoculars for the past couple of months. The easiest star-hop starts from fourth magnitude gamma Arietis, the southwestern end of the three stars of Aries’ horn. Fifth magnitude iota Arietis is less than 2 degrees south-southeast from gamma. Uranus is currently 6 degrees farther along that same line. The star 19 Arietis, as bright as Uranus, is 3 degrees north-northwest of the planet, noticeably yellowish compared to Uranus’ subtly bluish grey.
P.S. — Vesta will be at opposition November 12.
Yes it’ll do Neptune I haven’t tried for Titan with it.i have a 10×42 Viking monocular too and have had things like m1,m101,m51 in it so I’m guessing that the 8×36 will get them too but two times smaller!I can be certain about the ring nebula in either but think both just do it?
Your eyes are much sharper than mine.