Two strikingly bright points of light crept even closer together among the stars on Wednesday night. With the rare ‘collaboration’ of the planets Jupiter and Venus, celestial enthusiasts were in for another treat, following the Northern Lights and a rare green comet.
Anyone who went outside last night to see if the auroral lights would show themselves a third time was disappointed. The Northern Lights have moved towards Russia. However, the two bright planets that are close to each other like piercing eyes immediately stood out. Wednesday evening they seem to be even more on a collision course. Seen from Earth, they are almost aligned. This is especially noticeable because they are the brightest objects in the starry sky – apart from the moon.
On the same line
“It may seem that Venus and Jupiter are very close to each other,” says Theo Mulder of Public Observatory Orion in Bovenkarspel, “But in reality they are still hundreds of millions of kilometers apart.”
Jupiter orbits the Sun in a much larger orbit than Venus and Earth. “But on Wednesday night, Venus passes in front of Jupiter, bringing them into alignment as seen from Earth.”
This conjunction of planets does not happen very often. At the end of April last year, they were seen even closer together. The next time they appear to be nearly aligned again will be in 2039.
“You can simply photograph the phenomenon with your mobile phone,” says Mulder. “The sun will set around six tonight and then you have about an hour and a half to see the conjunction. It does depend on where you are, because in the busy city it can be that the planets disappear behind the roofs. If you stand on an open field with a clear horizon, it is possible to see the planets until half past seven.”
Special month
It is a special month for lovers of remarkable phenomena above our heads. On Monday and Tuesday, the northern lights could be seen with the naked eye in many dark places in the country. Earlier in February, with binoculars or a telescope, the green comet ZTF could already be seen near the constellation Orion: another phenomenon that does not occur every day.
Through Wednesday, Jupiter was the upper planet and Venus (the brighter of the two) was the lower. As of Thursday, as they move away from each other, it’s the other way around.