Venus-Jupiter Conjunction Peaks Thursday—Easy-to-See Sky Show
Spectacle will appear in Northern Hemisphere evening skies to the west.
Though the two planets will appear to converge all this week, they'll be at their closest March 15—separated by only 3 degrees in the sky, or the width of two fingers at arms' length.
When two worlds seem to line up in the sky, it's called a conjunction. But the apparent proximity is an optical illusion—in reality, Venus is nearly 75.9 million miles (122 million kilometers) distant from Earth, and Jupiter sits about seven times farther away at 524 million miles (844 million kilometers) from Earth.
Visible throughout the Northern Hemisphere, this week's sky show lasts for more than four hours after sunset, before the planets themselves sink below the horizon.
"While such conjunctions are without any particular scientific value, and
