Get ready for the great Venus and Jupiter conjunction

[pokerfan]

Keep looking up!

The first two stars to pop out after sunset are no true stars at all – but the dazzling planets Venus and Jupiter. Look westward at dusk and you can’t miss this pair of brilliant beauties. Venus and Jupiter blaze as the third-brightest and fourth-brightest celestial bodies, respectively, after the sun and moon.

This next week provides a wonderful opportunity to see why the Greek word planet means wanderer. Whereas stars appear fixed – like dots in a connect-the-dots book – the planets wander in front of the background stars, and relative to one another.

Starting this evening, watch these two brilliant worlds race along the ecliptic – the great planetary racetrack circling through the constellations of the zodiac. Both of these worlds presently reside in the constellation Aries. Both are traveling eastward along the ecliptic and heading for the Pleiades star cluster in the constellation Taurus.



http://earthsky.org/tonight/get-ready-for-the-great-venusjupiter-conjunction

[niyad]

1. thank you for sharing this. I miss jack--the two guys they use now just aren't the same.

[pokerfan]

2. I was wondering if anyone would catch that

I miss Jack too. I met him once at an Astrocon. A wonderful and generous man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Horkheimer

Horkheimer had been close to death on several occasions because of his health issues.[1] As a result, he had prepared a grave site next to his parents. He also had a tombstone prepared and wrote his own epitaph, which reads;[3]

"Keep Looking Up" was my life's admonition;
I can do little else in my present position.

[niyad]

3. how wonderful that you got to meet him--I always had the impression that he was a very nice

person--someone I definitely wanted to meet.

[Nostradammit]

6. Thanks for posting his epitaph!

He once restored my faith in humanity when I had none left in the dark hours of a gloomy night.

"Keep looking up" he admonished, and so I did.

What a good human he was.

[pokerfan]

8. Funny tidbit

The Internet forced him to abandon the name 'Star Hustler'...

Jack Horkheimer was probably best known for his naked-eye astronomy television show Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler, which started in 1976 and was broadcast nationally in 1985. Created, produced and written by Horkheimer, the show changed its name to Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer in 1997 because Internet searches were producing results for the adult magazine Hustler.

<insert heavenly bodies joke here>

[eridani]

4. Neat graphic

The Pleiades hang
from cold, bare maple branches.
Wind does not move them.

[Syrinx]

5. I saw that

I decided to drive out to get a pizza last night. I figured one was Venus, but didn't know that the other one was Jupiter. It was quite striking.

[HopeHoops]

7. I've seen them. It's a wonderful view.

[jakeXT]

9. I'll wait for the transit

http://www.transitofvenus.org/

[pokerfan]

10. Just added June 5 to my calendar

Obligatory warning:

Don't ever look directly at the Sun through a telescope or in any other way, unless you have the proper filters! For more details, follow the link. You can permanently damage your eyes.
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/observe/safety.html