I'm amazed at the ability of astronomers to predict celestial happenings, which always seem to surprise me. We had noticed Jupiter and Venus sharing the same patch of sky for at least a month now but paid less attention to the fact that they were getting closer and closer to each other. Tonight, the planets were in their closest conjunction until August of next year. A conjunction describes what we observe from Earth to be the close approach of other celestial objects to each other. Of course, Jupiter and Venus are not actually close to each other in the sky at all, and they're traveling through space at much different rates. Though we missed the time of closest conjunction tonight (right after sunset), we were still happy to remember to head outside and look to the sky to see Jupiter and Venus in (almost) the same place.
No comments:
Post a Comment