Observers with clear skies on December 31, 2008 will be treated to a special New Year's planetary show. This special show will consist of a double conjunction! The two conjunctions, respectively, will be between our Moon and Venus, and between Jupiter and Mercury. The image to the right shows the view of this event as seen at 5:45 PM local time on the evening of December 31, 2008 (click image for a larger version). The thin crescent moon will join the bright planet Venus, and thus the two brightest objects in the night sky will be right next to each other. Jupiter, also very bright, will join Mercury very low and near the horizon.When and Where to Look
To see this spectacular New Year's Eve show, go out into your backyard (or any yard for that matter), and look to the Southwest. The double conjunction event will be visible during sunset and until about 6 PM local time. The Jupiter-Mercury conjunction will set around this time. The Moon-Venus conjunction, however, will be visible until a little after 9 PM local time. The two conjunctions will be fairly obvious, and can be observed with the naked eye.
Clear skies!
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Saturday, December 20, 2008
New Year's Eve Planetary Show
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5 comments:
where on earth is your viewing point in stellarium located?
If I remember correctly, it should be set up for my parent's backyard in Ashtabula, Ohio. I don't have it set up for my place in Youngstown since the light pollution is too bad!
The view should be pretty similar at 5:45 PM local time in any of the time zones.
Sean
December 22, 2008 8:15 PM
Thanks Sean. We live in the Northeast and will look for this tonight. This is a great blog you have.
I recently posted about our Geminid experience. Our view on New yaers what slightly different. The sky wae cloudless and humidity was high. We were about to shoot fireworks about 6:45p when my son asked what was the VERY BRIGHT object just below and to the right of the moon. Not knowing we came inside quickly and logged on to find out it was Venus. QUITE BRIGHT, smaller but as bright as the moon. We saw that Mercury and Jupiter should be visible but had to wait almost 1 hour to see them. There were buildings and trees blocking our view. Eventually we could see all 4 planets and my son was overwhelmed when he realized that we saw image son the internet and correlated them to our simple earth based exsistence. We bought him several celestail obsevation toolsbooks and cd's for christmas. i yhink/hope that we have found something for his future goals. he has your space book marked and checks out your posts on his alloted computer time. he is 11 and this new years experience amplified his fascination with the heavens. Thanks for having this site. we have an email address together at dragginfly@comcast.net.
Oh, we are located in corinth, ms and would love to have updates and times for any celestial viewings, if you would be kind enough to inform us!!
thanks, keep up the great work!!
Michael(DAD) and Chris (SON)
We want to view the Leonids this year (2009). I have been searching everywhere for best North American viewing times. Everything directs me to hitorical dates and I can't find this years viewing info. Last year I found a site that I entered our zip code and it dtated the best viewing times for our area. We live in Corinth, MS 38834. Can you help us?
Thanks,
Michael (dad) and Chris (son)
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