Mars passes less than 1 degree north of Uranus on February 27, 2017

Venus dominates the early evening sky this month. The brightest of planet of all dazzles at mag. -4.8 and remains a brilliant object above the western horizon just after sunset. Given the brilliance of Venus, you might be forgiven for thinking there was only one planet on show during early evening, but there isn't. Currently located in the same region of sky are Mars and Uranus. The difference in brightness between the three planets is striking. Venus is 275x brighter than Mars (mag. +1.3), with Mars 70x brighter than Uranus (mag. +5.9).

A close conjunction occurs on February 27th, when Mars passes less than a degree north of Uranus. The Red planet then acts as a perfect marker for locating the much more distant Uranus. Both objects will be visible in the same binocular field of view and when minimum separation occurs at 8 UT, they will by only 0.6 degrees apart.

The diagrams below show the planetary positions and a telescopic view of the conjunction.

Venus, Mars and Uranus during February 2017 - pdf format (credit:- freestarcharts)