Jupiter heading toward Venus

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NEW YORK: Keep watching the brilliant points of light in the evening sky this spring (2015). I refer to the planets Venus and Jupiter. Like beacons, they glow with reflected sunlight proving in the night that our sun is still shining. Like these worlds, our own planet will surely keep turning until we are once again are enlightened by the faithful sunrise. Let us enjoy the night, as brief as it is this time of year, and getting briefer all the time as we head toward the summer solstice in late June – the longest day of the year and the shortest night.
Meanwhile, the ever-dynamic journeys of the solar system bodies play before us. While our planet speeds along, evidenced by the shifting constellations seen at any one time night to night, we also observe our neighbor planets in their orbital reconnaissance. Venus is the much brighter point of line, seen high in the west as twilight deepens. The second planet from the sun, Venus is especially bright for three reasons; it is relatively near the sun, relatively near the Earth and perpetually shrouded in cloud, making a wonderful reflector.
Venus is presently magnitude – (minus) 4.2. The brightest star we can see at night is Sirius, well placed in winter evening skies, shining at – 1.46. Jupiter is currently visible high in the southwest at the close of twilight. Glowing at – 2.0, the fifth planet from the Sun is much farther but it is such a large world, it shines with great light. As of May 8 these planets were 43 degrees apart, almost the same span as a star half way up the sky (straight up, the “zenith”, is 90 degrees from the flat horizon). Watch as the apparent distance between the planets shrinks to an amazingly close conjunction the last week in June. At their closet, Jupiter will be just under a half degree from Venus! The full moon appears approximately one half degree wide.