Astronomy

Jjstargazer

Jupiter has been chasing Venus across the night sky and tonight it will finally catch up....even though they are millions of miles apart, from earth they will appear to be next door neighbours. This will be their closest in 107 years. So unless we are reincarnated none of us alive today will witness such a close approach of these two planets. You can view them both with the naked eye over in the western sky after sunset which is 9.56 pm. Enjoy!

Jjstargazer

This month there is a Blue Moon. Why I hear you ask. Because there are two full moons. The first is tomorrow night 2nd which is called a Strawberry or Hay Moon. The second is on the 31st and this is the Blue Moon because it only happens once in a blue moon. The last blue moon occurred in 2012 and the one is 2018 when we will see 2 blue moons in January and March.

Jjstargazer

On Tuesday New Horizons spacecraft will have a very close flyby past Pluto. Pluto was discovered in 1930.It has 5 moons the largest is Charon. Since it was discovered Pluto still has not gone around the sun. In fact it has only travelled one third the distance around the sun. It takes Pluto 248 earth years to complete one orbit. Its day is 6.4 earth days. Hopefully it will he reclassified a Planet.