Why You Could See Venus And Jupiter

Why you could see Venus and Jupiter in the night sky.

Image Credit & Copyright: Giovanni Tumino

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By: Andrew Ma, Journalist

Did you know that Venus and Jupiter aligned a couple nights ago? It was an amazing sight to see.  This is called a planetary conjunction. A planetary conjunction is when two planets are close to each other in the sky. If you just looked up to the sky during the night you could see both Venus and Jupiter. Venus and Jupiter will not get that close again for another couple of years so it was lucky we could get to see it. It looked like Venus and Jupiter were kissing in the sky.  A planetary conjunction happens because planets orbit around the Sun just like Earth and they eventually get close to each other because they go in similar paths. Planetary conjunctions don’t happen too often but they are not very rare. Another time that a planetary conjunction was December 2004 where five planets aligned! The rarest kind of planetary conjunction is between Jupiter and Saturn and this is called a Great Conjunction.  This conjunction happens every 20 years while a Venus and Jupiter conjunction happens every couple of years. Just take a moment in the next couple of weeks to look up and see these two planets in the sky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Related Stories:

https://www.businessinsider.com/jupiter-venus-conjunction-planets-align-sky-how-where-when-see-2023-2

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/venus-jupiter-conjunction/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/03/01/jupiter-venus-conjunction-moon/

https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/what-planetary-conjunction 

https://www.travelandleisure.com/march-space-planet-conjunction-equinox-sightings-7152625

Take Action:

https://www.nasa.gov