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 

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