Observing the planets is rewarding with Jupiter’s clouds changing within hours, Mars’ surface features changing within days, the phases of Mercury within weeks, the phases of Venus within months, and the rings of Saturn within years. Uranus and Neptune may be too far away, too small and dim to observe, but given a clear, moonless night away from bright city lights they are both easy to locate and follow with the finder charts that follow this article.

Uranus (magnitude +5.6) and Neptune (magnitude +7.8) are dim because they orbit the Sun 1.8 and 2.7 billion miles, respectively. In the dim depths of the outer Solar System, daytime sunlight is no brighter than a clear evening sky on Earth shortly after sunset. Both planets are about four times larger than Earth, slightly over 30,000 miles in diameter, and have thick atmospheres that are completely cloudy. The small amount of methane (3%) in Neptune’s atmosphere absorbs the red component of sunlight and scatters the blue creating a soft bluish hue. Uranus does not appear as blue because it has a little less methane (2%) and unlike Neptune it has a ruddy haze that shifts its color towards the green giving it a turquoise hue. These colors are obvious whenever they are near stars of contrasting colors.

Uranus spends 2025 in Taurus between the Pleiades and Hyades, a beautiful area to photograph. It is easy to find with several bright stars for star hopping and being high up around midnight away from the worst of the atmospheric turbulence. Neptune, below the Circlet in Pisces, is a bit more challenging, but Saturn will be nearby this year as a guide to help find it. Neptune will be at opposition on September 23 while Uranus will be at opposition on November 21. Rising at sunset and setting at sunrise, both worlds will be up all night on these dates. They will remain in the evening sky for the rest of the year and into early 2026 with Neptune fading into the evening twilight by February and Uranus by April.

Given a night of steady seeing, a small telescope should be capable of resolving the discs and revealing the colors of these remote worlds; however, both planets are too far away to observe cloud detail or moons unless the telescope has an aperture of at least 16 inches. Uranus is 3.8 arcseconds across and Neptune is 2.4 arcseconds across. They are not identical twins with Uranus appearing distinctly turquoise while Neptune is a dimmer grayish-blue.

The Barton-Brown Observatory (BBO) at the Waterville Public Library houses a research grade, 16-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and its superior optics in the relatively dark skies south of Utica’s bright city lights consistently reveal Uranus as a true turquoise globe and, during nights of perfect seeing, two of the five largest moons, Oberon and Titania, are visible. The other three moons of Uranus: Umbriel, Ariel, and Miranda, are dimmer and have yet to be seen; all five moons shine at magnitude +14 to +15. Neptune is a chilly-bluish, tiny globe with Triton shining nearby most of the time, but quite dim at magnitude +13.5.

Using a telescope of at least 16” such as the one at the BBO may increase the chances of seeing the bright north polar cloud cap of Uranus as it is pointed almost directly towards Earth or seeing bright or dark spots on Neptune. Extremely high power will be mandatory as they will not be obvious so photography might be the best option to see them. The best project to do, especially with larger telescopes, is to compare their color differences. Both worlds are almost blue, but which is bluer? Neptune is farther away and dimmer, but Uranus is closer, larger, brighter and able to stimulate the color receptors in the eyes better. Future missions with modern imaging could better settle the issue, but why not look for yourself?