Planetary Alignment: Jupiter and Venus

For those of you that enjoy being outdoors at night, for camping, walking or especially stargazing, this weekend looks promising for good viewing up in the night sky. The Moon, Venus, and Jupiter will be making a triangle this weekend.

The view in the excellent Starry Night Explorer

In the next few weeks Jupiter and Venus will gradually continue to close their alignment in our view. By the 25/26 March, Jupiter and Venus will have swapped over (with Jupiter being lower than Venus in our view), after looking very close together from our viewpoint. The moon will give us a similar triangle that weekend too, but you'll want to be looking earlier around 20:30 - before Jupiter dips below the horizon.

Here's a video from NASA with visuals of what you can expect if you're looking West before 22:00 this weekend:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8br4JiFEik&feature=player_embedded

Hope you all get to enjoy it :)