If you have been watching the early evening skies at all in the last few weeks you probably noticed the two superbright ‘stars’ in the west are drawing closer together by the day. Two of the most brilliant planets in our solar system, Venus and Jupiter, are about to get a lot more cozy in the heavens.
The main event will be from March 12 to 15 when the two worlds will come closest together in the sky. The planetary pair will be only 3 degrees apart. That is equal to the width of your three middle fingers at arms length, making for a spectacular sight not to be missed. By the way, Venus is the brighter of the two.
After this week the two planets will part company – like two passing ships – with Venus continuing its climb higher in the sky and Jupiter slowly sinking towards the horizon.
Conjunctions between planets are not the rarest sights but it does really depend on their placement in their orbits so that they appear to be in the same line of sight from our point of view here on Earth.
While Venus takes 224 days to make one orbit around the Sun, it takes Jupiter just under 12 years to do the same since it circles the sun much farther away.
It’s incredible to think that these bright points in the sky are the reflection of sunlight off the cloud tops of Jupiter and Venus. And remember that it’s only an optical illusion that they appear side by side. While Venus is about 150 million km from Earth, Jupiter is more than 600 million km further away!
So it’s really just a matter of time for Jupiter and Venus to have a another close encounter in our skies.
If you miss this close conjunction however you will have to wait until 2015 for the next opportunity.
Also, as a final celestial act, mark March 25 and 26 on your calendar- the thin crescent moon will join Jupiter and then Venus in back to back pretty pairings in the western sunset sky.