Glimpse the Milky Way\u2019s center<\/a><\/p>\nMars passes 0.1\u00b0 south of Uranus in Taurus the Bull at 1 A.M. EDT. By about an hour before sunrise, roughly 4:30 A.M. local daylight time, you\u2019ll find both planets some 16\u00b0 high in the east, between the bright star Aldebaran and the Pleiades star cluster.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mars will be readily visible to the naked eye, a reddish-orange light glowing at magnitude 1.3 above Aldebaran. Uranus, however, will be difficult without optical aid in the slowly growing twilight \u2014 but any optics will show it, including binoculars or a small telescope. Look for it just 9\u2032 northwest of Mars, glowing at magnitude 5.8. It should appear as a tiny, circular disk with a slight bluish-green hue. You might even spot a fainter, 8th-magnitude field star between the planets \u2014 but don\u2019t be misled, Uranus is brighter and farther northwest of Mars than this star.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Follow the pair of planets as long as you can in the growing twilight. By tomorrow, they will have pulled farther apart, with Mars 45\u2032 due east of Uranus \u2014 still in the same telescopic or binocular field of view, so if you can\u2019t catch the pair today, try again tomorrow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sunrise:\u00a05:37 A.M.
Sunset:\u00a08:32 P.M.
Moonrise:\u00a011:20 P.M.
Moonset:\u00a010:01 A.M.
Moon Phase:\u00a0Waning gibbous (77%)
*Times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset are given in local time from 40\u00b0 N 90\u00b0 W. The Moon\u2019s illumination is given at 10 P.M. local time from the same location.<\/p>\n
Saturn\u2019s largest and brightest moon, Titan, lies close to its parent planet the morning of July 6. You can spot it \u2014 along with several of Saturn\u2019s other moons \u2014 with a telescope in the early-morning sky.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Diagram](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/saturn-moons-07052026-2.png\")
<\/p>\n
\t\tTitan stands close to Saturn the morning of July 5; you may also spot several of the planet\u2019s other moons, depending on the time. Credit: Stellarium\/Oleg Pluton<\/p>\n
Try between about 3 A.M. local daylight time and sunrise, when Saturn is more than 20\u00b0 above the horizon. You\u2019ll find the ringed planet in the east around 3 A.M. and in southeast after 4 A.M. Glowing at magnitude 0.7, it\u2019s the brightest light in this region of the sky. Through a telescope, Saturn\u2019s disk stretches some 18\u201d, with rings that span roughly 40\u201d from end to end. Titan, which glows at mid-8th-magnitude, is just northwest of the planet. Depending on when you look, you may catch at least three other moons: 10th-magnitude Tethys, Rhea, and Dione.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Around 3 A.M. CDT, Dione lies east of the planet, in line with the rings. Tethys is just northeast of the disk, above the rings, while Rhea is west of the planet and slightly north of the plane of the rings. Tethys is moving toward the limb and disappears behind it shortly after 4 A.M. CDT.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Iapetus, which is now approaching western elongation, shines at roughly 10th magnitude as well. Look for it some 5\u00bd\u2019 from Saturn, far to the planet\u2019s west.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alison Klesman\u00a0is senior editor of\u00a0Astronomy\u00a0magazine. She holds a Ph.D. in astronomy and has studied a variety of topics, from minor planets to supermassive black holes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List The Red Planet meets the distant ice giant Uranus in the constellation Taurus, visible…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,7882,82,44123,247],"class_list":["post-533725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-observing","tag-science","tag-sky-tonight","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Mars](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ASY-SM0726_06.png\")
<\/p>\n