Planets in dazzling array; conjunction peaks next week

By Frank D. Roylance
The Baltimore Sun

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Jupiter and Venus, the two brightest planets visible to the naked eye, are converging in a dramatic conjunction that will only become better next week.

"It's pretty spectacular," said Jim O'Leary, director of the Maryland Science Center's Davis Planetarium. "It reminds you of the ancients and their mythology, and how they referred to the planets as gods because they could easily wander the sky.

"A conjunction like this was always a momentous gathering of the gods in the sky," he added. "It's sort of a neat connection to our ancestors."

The two planets appeared less than 1 degree apart, about the width of a full moon.

It's an optical illusion, of course. Venus, the brighter object of the pair, actually is 118 million miles away. Jupiter is almost five times as distant — about 580 million miles away, and on the far side of the solar system. It appears as bright as it is only because it's so much larger than Venus.

Each morning in the coming days, Venus will move lower in the sky, widening its apparent distance from Jupiter.

But the sky show will become better Tuesday morning, when the waning crescent moon joins the two planets in the predawn sky. "Early risers should notice it," O'Leary said.

Such close conjunctions of Jupiter and Venus occur at regular intervals. They cluster in morning-and-evening pairs, separated by about 2½ years.

This week's conjunction will be followed by its evening counterpart, in the western sky Sept. 2. The two planets will converge again in February and December 2008, and then in May 2011 and March 2012.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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