Venus and Jupiter
may have caught your attention lately.
The
recent close conjunction
of the two brightest planets in recent evening skies has been
hard to miss.
With Jupiter at the top, starting on May 30 and ending on June 8,
their close approach was
chronicled daily, left to right, in the
featured panels from
Maharashtra,
India.
Near the western horizon, the
evening sky colors
and exposures used for each panel depend on the local conditions near sunset.
At their closest on June 9, the
celestial pair appeared to be only
about three times the width of a full moon apart.
Of course, on that date, the
two planets
were physically separated by over 600 million kilometers in their
orbits around the Sun.
In the coming days,
Jupiter
will slowly settle into the sunset glare, but
Venus
will continue to move farther from the Sun in the
western sky to excel in its current role as the
brilliant evening star.