As Tuesday gets closer and closer to today, so too will the two planets inch towards each other.
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According to astronomer Dr. However, a telescope should not be needed.
NASA’s Tony Phillips wrote in a statement that “you don’t have to wait until the sky fades to black”. These are not stars but the two brightest planets in the night sky, Venus and Jupiter.
The main event to look out for is on June 30, when Jupiter and Venus are so close they nearly look like they are colliding – you’ll be able to block them both out with an outstretched tiny finger. As mentioned in last week’s column, this spectacular conjunction is visible this week in the western sky after sunset.
It will be their closest conjunction in more than 10 years.
Even a small telescope or a pair of binoculars will show the two planets in the same field of view.
On the nights of June 19 and June 20, looking through a telescope allowed seeing not only the fat crescent phase of Venus, the cloudtops and Jupiter’s largest moons but also the rough terrain of Earth’s Moon. Venus and Jupiter will appear the closest tonight until August 27, 2016 where their width apart will be just 1/10th of a degree! That one is Venus.
The planets, which are hundreds of millions of miles apart, may look as though they are about to merge due to a line-of-sight illusion and create a “superstar”. The giant gas planet obits the sun at around 565 million miles from the Earth, while Venus sits just 58 million miles from us. In terms of size, Venus and Jupiter are very different.
Planets meet often in the sky. This is so close, you won’t be able to fit a pencil – held at arm’s length – between them.
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We’ll be treated to a celestial event in the night sky starting this evening across the Susquehanna Valley. Not far to their upper left, appearing much fainter, is Regulus, the alpha star in the constellation Leo.
