If you’ve looked up shortly after sunset on a clear evening in the last few days, you may have noticed two very bright stars in the West. Those are not stars — they’re the planets Venus and Jupiter. The two are putting up a show in the next days/weeks as they get closer for a conjunction in March. By the end of Feb, they will be joined by the crescent Moon. This year though the three will not conspire to form a Smiley Face, but it’s still a pretty neat thing to see! Many people that see the bright objects mistake them for a UFO, but you know better now!

This NASA story gives more details about the conjunction, but it does not mention that there are more planets visible the next few weeks: Mars rises in the east around sunset, and Saturn a few hours later. You may want to look at Saturn before sunrise, and then take the opportunity to try and find Mercury in the twilight, and then you have seen all planets that are visible to the naked eye in 1 night!

A good source of information for all your skygazing needs in the site Heavens Above, which also lists passes of the International Space Station and other satellites. Or why not use the free planetarium software package Stellarium to search for what wonders of the sky you can see for yourself? Of course, we are here to point it out for you — on our Cronyn observatory public nights (one coming up next weekend, on Feb 25!)

 

 

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