Venus-Jupiter conjunction

[kingpin12345]

People, over the next few nights, if you live in the northan hemisphere, look to the west in the sky and you will see a very bright star. It is actually two stars. Venus and Jupiter. Yes there are stars named after the planets. Anyways, they are converging and this happens only once every 2000 years for a few days.

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P.S. Please ignore the attached thumbnails picture, it is very poor quality and I can't remove it.

[Xpand]

...Yes there are stars named after the planets...

You're joking right? xD
Those bright spots are the actual planets Jupiter and Venus. Real stars are stationary relative to each other (at least they take more than hundreds of millions of years to move a significant distance in such a way that we would notice).
And actually that will repeat in about a decade or so.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150629-spot-venus-jupiter-conjunction-sky/


Too bad we have a thick cloud layer in the sky tonight, where I live...

[kingpin12345]

Thanks for the correction Xpand. I honestly always thought that there were stars named after the two planets. But they only converge in the same place every 2000 years due to the fact that they rotate around the sun at different speeds. And if you're lucky enough to have very little cloud cover you might see it tomorrow night. I also did some research and apparently, when they are at this position, they are know an the Star of Bethlehem, the same star that supposedly was shining above the stable that Jesus Christ was born in.

And just so you know, I'm not a Christian. Whilst I do have Christian beliefs, I also have believes from over religions and some of my own.

[Xpand]

I don't know where you've got that 2000 years thing from. This event happens every 15 years. It's going to happen again in August 27th this year too.
Read this: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150629-spot-venus-jupiter-conjunction-sky/

[kingpin12345]

I read that it happens every 2000 years in a book that was published by both NASA and ESA. Plus, NatGeo actually focuses on Earth not other planets. It could be very similar conjunctions and as such are mistaken for the Venus/Jupiter conjunction.

[Hellfire_WZ]

Conjunctions between Venus and Jupiter are actually very common. In fact the last one was last year on August 18th, and they were actually slightly closer together than they are now. At the moment, the two planets are about 20 arcminutes apart, enough to cover both with the tip of your finger at arm's length. The next major one between these two planets is August 27th 2016, and they'll be five times closer together than they are now. Close enough in fact that if you had a telescope with a wide FOV eyepiece, this is what you'd see:

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BTW, if you create a topic, please be specific in the title what it is about, ambiguous titles don't help anyone.

[vincoof]

You can take a look at the free Stellarium (http://www.stellarium.org/en/) project which is an excellent tool for astronomy fans.

[Hellfire_WZ]

That's what I used for that screenshot :) It's a very good teaching aid too, I use it all the time with my Astronomy classes.