Smiley Face In The Night Sky
Posted by TonyfromOz on 12/02/2008
This image was one of literally hundreds taken of this sight. Click on the image to open in a new and larger window.
CLOSE CONJUNCTION OF OUR CELESTIAL NEIGHBOURS
Last night we had a unique sight in the early evening night sky.
As you may be aware, the Stars are fixed in their positions in the night sky. The Moon moves across that night sky in a relatively speedy manner, well when viewed over a period of hours anyway.
Also moving around in the night sky are our closest neighbours, besides our Moon, and these are the Planets. They move fractionally, something you cannot see unless taking a reference point to one of those Stars, and then viewing the small speck of light over a period of nights, weeks and months.
The brightest of these is our closest Planetary neighbour, Venus, which is approximately the same size as our Earth. This is the brightest light in the sky other than the moon. It is sometimes called the Morning Star or the Evening Star, and it is sometimes very bright indeed.
Last night, it was in close conjunction with the largest Planet in our Solar System, the Gas Giant, Jupiter, about half as bright as Venus, Venus being brighter because it is closer, and Jupiter visible to the naked eye because even as far away from Earth as it is, it’s huge size enables it to be seen.
Along with this close proximity of these two Planets, the Moon was also in the same area, the closest conjunction of these three celestial bodies, well, as you would look at them from the Earth’s surface anyway.
The Moon is waxing, which means it has passed the New Moon stage and is moving back towards a Full Moon. The waxing Moon was slightly below and a little off to the left of the two Visible Planets. The larger glow of the two Planets was Venus which is on the left as you see it, with Jupiter on the right.
The resultant image was of an elongated ‘Smiley Face’.
This was visible from Sunset, and became brighter as the sky darkened into night.
It created a sensation across Australia, and there have been hundreds of images taken of the sight.
Something interesting is that now we have the capability, knowing the rotation and movement of the Planets, we can trace their movements back to the dawn of time. The interesting conjecture is that in the year 2AD, these same two Planets were so close in proximity that they appeared almost as the one light in the night sky. Their collective brightness would have added and made an exceedingly bright image in the sky, brighter than any other star in the sky. The point of conjecture is that this very bright light in the sky could have been what the three wise men used as a guide as they followed the light in the sky, as they searched the Land for the birthplace of Jesus, which was around that period in time.
A sight such as this will not be visible for another 34 years.
