As well as the bright planets Venus, Saturn, Mars and Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune are also in the sky at the moment. Want to search for them? You will need binoculars, and a good clear sky, but even from a city you can find Uranus. Read on!
Finding Uranus
It’s best to look for Uranus in the first three days of the Week, or maybe the last two, because the Moon will be quite near to it in between, particularly on the 5th when the Moon is very close so its light might drown out the much fainter Uranus. Begin by finding the Pleiades star cluster, which is described in the video, starting about seven minutes in. But otherwise, just look for Jupiter high in the south and you should see the Pleiades (Seven Sisters) as a little group of stars to its right. They are easily spotted with the naked eye.
Now look at the Pleiades with your binoculars. Straight away you’ll see many more stars in the cluster — not just seven, but dozens. Get them to the upper left of the field of view, as shown in the map below (circle 1), and move down to find the little triangle of three stars and two other stars shown in circle 2. These circles show the field of view of typical binoculars.
Uranus is marked in circle 2. But you won’t see an actual disc — it just looks like a star. It’s almost twice as far away as Saturn, at nearly three billion km. Being so far from the Sun, its movement from week to week is so small that you’ll be able to find it for weeks in almost exactly the same spot.
A reasonable amateur telescope, capable of magnifying about 100 times, will show that tiny disc, and may even show that it is distinctly blue.

You can also watch a video of finding Uranus, showing the actual stars as seen through binoculars.
Finding Neptune
Neptune is altogether more tricky than Uranus, because it’s much fainter, but it’s still possible with large binoculars and a lot of patience. It is right below Venus, but you’ll need to hold the binoculars rock steady and have a dark sky with no haze. The thin crescent Moon is close to it on 1 February, but Venus is your best guide anyway.
Here’s the equivalent map for finding Uranus, by starting from Venus. In this case the circle shows the field of view of higher power binoculars. It is shown for 1 February, but Venus moves quite a lot to the upper left each day, so on other days you’ll need to find the same group of stars or use the free app Stellarium to get a chart for the day you are viewing.
