See Venus & Jupiter close conjunction tonight!

Be sure to check out the western sky as soon as it gets dark (by 8:15) Look to where the Sun set and you will see 2 bright "stars". The brighter is Venus and the 2nd is Jupiter. They will be closest tonight as Venus continues sailing to the left. By tomorrow Venus will pass Jupiter and appear to its left. The planets are most striking when view in the dark blue background of twilight, but will be available for viewing till about 10:00 pm when they will be getting ready to set.

Note that even though the 2 planets appear close to each other  from our point of view they are actually very far apart. While Venus is "merely" about 77.6 million kilometers away on our side of the Sun, Jupiter is 12 times farther, on the other side of the Sun! (For a nice visualization see The Planets Today)

And if you are up late tonight watching the stars, be sure to adjust your clocks to add a leap second before midnight :-)

-AstroTom 

http://astrowife.blogspot.com
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Not UFOs

Those two bright beacons in the western sky after sunset are not UFOs. They are in fact our solar system neighbors  Venus and Jupiter. Venus is the lower and brighter one, with Jupiter above to the left.

The two planets have been gracing our night sky for months now, but Venus is getting brighter and hard to miss.. You may also have notices that the two are getting closer to each other. Venus is moving rapidly up toward Jupiter

 and the pair will be closest on the evening of June 30 when they will be less that the diameter of a full moon apart.  As a warm up show, the two planets will team up with the new crescent Moon this Sat night. 

For photos, and more see my friend Gadi's web site:

English

http://www.thevenustransit.com/2015/06/jupiter-and-venus-conjunction.html

Hebrew

http://gadieid.blogspot.co.il/2015/06/Jupiter-and-Venus.html

-AstroTom

http://astrowife.blogspot.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroTom/
 Stay up to date with the Sun, planets and stars.
 Subscribe to AstroTom with an email to:
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