CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Mars and Jupiter will align in the night sky for their closest conjunction of the decade this Wednesday, offering a stunning celestial display. The two planets will appear so close that, from our perspective, only a sliver of the moon could fit between them, despite being over 350 million miles (575 million kilometers) apart in their orbits.
The alignment, known as a planetary conjunction, will reach its minimum separation of one-third of a degree — roughly one-third the width of the moon — during daylight hours on Wednesday in most of the Americas, Europe, and Africa. However, the planets will still appear closely aligned hours before or after this peak, said Jon Giorgini from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
The best viewing opportunities will be in the eastern sky, towards the constellation Taurus, before dawn. These rare events occur approximately every three years, offering both a visual spectacle and a chance to test astronomical predictions, according to Giorgini. “Such events are mostly items of curiosity and beauty for those watching the sky, wondering what the two bright objects so close together might be,” he noted. “The science is in the ability to accurately predict the events years in advance.”
Mars and Jupiter haven’t been this close since 2018 and won’t align this closely again until 2033, when they will come even closer. The closest such event in the past 1,000 years occurred in 1761 when the two planets appeared as a single bright object to the naked eye. The next nearly as close alignment will occur in 2348.
This conjunction of Mars and Jupiter coincides with the Perseid meteor shower, one of the year’s most brilliant meteor showers, adding to the celestial excitement. No binoculars or telescopes are needed to enjoy this spectacular sight.
Gary P Hernal started college at UP Diliman and received his BA in Economics from San Sebastian College, Manila, and Masters in Information Systems Management from Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry University in Oak Brook, IL. He has 25 years of copy editing and management experience at Thomson West, a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters.
