Venus And Jupiter Will Appear to 'Nearly Collide' in The Night Sky This Week

 

The conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter. (m-gucci/Getty Images)

This month, early risers were treated to a spectacular and unusual sight: the nearly perfect alignment of four planets in the night sky.

 

But there's still more to come! We'll be able to view Venus and Jupiter 'almost collide' in the early hours of April 30th, 2022, as they appear to travel extraordinarily close together from our vantage point.

 

Accordingto NASA, the two planets will get so near in the night sky that they will appear to merge into one massive, luminous mass to the naked eye.

 

Illustration of the sky looking east from Huntsville, Alabama, at 6:00 am on April 30, local time.

Binoculars or a telescope will be able to distinguish the two objects more clearly. At their closest approach, the planets will be 0.2 degrees apart — slightly less than the angular distance of a full moon.

 

The spectacle will reappear in the early morning hours of May 1, but the planets' positions will be reversed.

 

Of course, the planets aren't truly so close to one another; their orbits will only look to line up from our perspective of the night sky on Earth.

 

The planets will be 430 million miles (690 million kilometres) away in actuality, more than four times the Earth-Sun distance.

 

(Anything that came close enough to 'almost collide' with Jupiter would almost certainly be sucked into the gas giant's orbit, together with its 79 known moons, the largest of which is larger than Mercury.)

 

This apparent'merging' of Venus and Jupiter is the second conjunction of the month, following the alignment of Mars and Saturn at the beginning of April.

 

Neither of these conjunctions, however, can compare to the 'Great Conjunction' between Saturn and Venus that occurred at the end of 2020.

 

However, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's "What's Up" April skywatching advice, the April 30 encounter is still a "extremely close" conjunction worth waking up early for.

 

How to see the conjunction

To see the conjunction between Venus and Jupiter, you'll need to get up early, just like you did to see the planetary alignment of Venus, Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn this week.

 

Looking east in the hour before sunrise, the two planets will be best apparent.

 

Venus will be visible at magnitude -4, while Jupiter will be seen at magnitude -2.1, according to EarthSky.org. By comparison, the full moon shines at -12.7. (However, because the event falls on a new moon, it will be difficult to see.)

 

We have some excellent news for those who can't get enough of watching our vision of the Solar System change. This year, there's going to be an even bigger alignment.

 

On June 24, all of the other planets in the Solar System – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus – will align in an even more spectacular planetary alignment, though Neptune and Uranus will likely require a telescope to observe.

 

The alignment will also spread out over a larger area of the sky, making it more difficult to spot or capture.

 

Despite these difficulties, significant planetary alignments like this one, which can be seen with the naked eye, are extremely rare and have only happened three times since 2005, so don't miss it.

 

Partial solar eclipse on 30 April 2022

Never fear if you don't like getting up early or going outside to skywatch. This week also sees a partial solar eclipse, which occurs at the same time as the conjunction.

 

This happens when the Moon passes between us and the Sun, partially blocking off the Sun's light. A maximum of 64 percent of the Sun's disc will be veiled during this partial solar eclipse.

 

Only people in sections of Antarctica, South America, and the Pacific and Atlantic oceans will be able to see the event. However, owing to a livestream provided by India-based space YouTube channel Gyaan ki gareebi, you should be able to watch it from the comfort of your own home from anywhere in the world.

 

There's nothing like watching our Solar System neighbours move to put things in perspective and remind us that we're all simply floating around in space on a large, water-filled rock. Enjoy!