Uranus Makes a Surprise Appearance in This Night Sky Photo

Can you spot Uranus in this photo? What might look like a small speck of dust on your monitor is actually the third-largest planet in the solar system lurking nearly 1.9 billion miles (3.1 billion kilometers) away from Earth. Uranus is a dim and distant planet but, it is possible to see it with the naked eye. All you need is a dark sky, a clear night and an idea of where to look for it.

"Uranus is a difficult target that I have only seen a couple of times in my 35 years of doing astrophotography," said Victor Rogus, an astrophotographer based in Sedona, Arizona. 

After he discovered Uranus photobombing this conjunction of the moon and Mars on Feb. 10, he sent it to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, where astronomers "confirmed that this is indeed [the] planet Uranus in my photo," he said. At the time, Uranus was shining with an apparent magnitude of 5.8, which is just bright enough to detect with the unaided eye.

However, skywatchers in light-polluted cities like New York will need to travel to a darker location to observe the planet. Although telescopes and binoculars are not required to see Uranus on a dark, clear night, binoculars can come in handy when you're trying to locate it — especially for those with less-than-stellar eyesight.

Look for the planet in the constellation Aries in the evening sky this spring. Rogus captured this view using a Nikon Coolpix P900 autofocus camera zoomed to 1,000 millimeters without the help of a telescope or a special zoom lens.