King and Queen of the Night Sky: Jupiter (upper right) and Venus (left): photo by Journey to the Stars, 6:50 PM, 10 February 2012
"As I walked out one evening..."
-- Auden
-- Auden
Moon-Jupiter-Venus Celestial Lineup, viewed from Charlotte, North Carolina: photo by Mike O'Hara, 23 February 2012
Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, aligned above the Moon, viewed from San Bernardino, California: photo by Lyle Evans, 24 February 2012 (via EarthSky)
Sky map for Saturday 25 February, 2012: image by NASA
In the night sky over European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope observatory at Paranal, the Moon shines along with two bright companions: already aloft in the heavens and glowing in the centre of the image is Venus, Earth’s closest planetary neighbour, and, to its right, the giant, though more distant planet, Jupiter. Such apparent celestial near misses -- although the heavenly bodies are actually tens to hundreds of millions of kilometres apart -- are called conjunctions. Still other sights delight this night view at Paranal: the radiant, reddish plane of the Milky Way, smouldering on the horizon, and an 8.2-metre VLT Unit Telescope, along with a 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescope, standing firmly on the ground: image by ESO / Y. Beletsky, 3 December 2009
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