Can You See it?


As noted in my 2016 Calendar (https://wa-chur-ed.com/astro-photo-printsimagescalendars/), there will be a very close conjunction of Venus and Jupiter tomorrow, August 27th.  Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), the closest encounter of the two planets will be difficult to see here in North America.  It’s not surprising because Venus is never very far from the Sun, and at this time it’s actually quite close.

Venus-Jupiter-27Aug2016

However, if you wait until just after sunset you should be able to see them just above the western horizon for a short time, and they will still be quite close.  On the east coast the separation will be just 5 arcminutes at sunset, while on the west coast the gap will have widened to 11 arcminutes by the time the Sun sets there.  To put that in perspective, the width of the Moon is approximately 30 arcminutes, and the separation between Alcor and Mizar (the pair of stars that make the second point in the handle of the Big Dipper) is 12 arcminutes.

To learn more about this event, check out this article on Space.com:  http://www.space.com/33792-venus-jupiter-conjunction.html


About Greg Marshall

I am a retired electronics engineer and after a few months of enjoying my leisure I began to miss doing product development. My astronomy hobby always needed new solutions to unique problems, so I decided that whenever I came up with a good solution I would try to make it available to others.

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