From our vantage point on Earth, the two planets will be just one-third of a degree APART — which is less than the diameter of the full moon, according to NASA. Jupiter can be seen just above the gleaming spot that is Venus. They also will appear to be roughly the same size.
Both are illusions, of course: Venus is our nearest neighbor, sitting closer to the sun, and Jupiter sits far out in the solar system, at roughly five times the distance from the sun to the Earth. Because the one-eyed gas giant is so far away, it appears smaller — which is why it can look comparable to Venus, which is roughly the size of Earth.
(That’s also the same reason the moon can cover the sun, giving us a perfect solar eclipse — though it won’t do that forever, as the moon is slowly drifting away from the Earth and, in perhaps several hundred million years, potentially could appear too small to completely cover the disc of the sun.)
Tuesday, 30 June 2015
Jupiter and Venus Meet In Our Sky Tonight..!
From our vantage point on Earth, the two planets will be just one-third of a degree APART — which is less than the diameter of the full moon, according to NASA. Jupiter can be seen just above the gleaming spot that is Venus. They also will appear to be roughly the same size.
Both are illusions, of course: Venus is our nearest neighbor, sitting closer to the sun, and Jupiter sits far out in the solar system, at roughly five times the distance from the sun to the Earth. Because the one-eyed gas giant is so far away, it appears smaller — which is why it can look comparable to Venus, which is roughly the size of Earth.
(That’s also the same reason the moon can cover the sun, giving us a perfect solar eclipse — though it won’t do that forever, as the moon is slowly drifting away from the Earth and, in perhaps several hundred million years, potentially could appear too small to completely cover the disc of the sun.)
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