Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy has published a new spectacular photo. It demonstrates the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter.
The conjunction of Venus and Jupiter was observed from March 1 to March 3. Of course, in reality, two planets were not in the neighborhood — they were separated by a distance of 660 million km. But due to the mutual location of Venus and Jupiter in the Earth’s sky, it seemed that they were next to each other. At the time of the closest approach, the distance between the planets was about 0.5 degrees. This is comparable to the angular diameter of the full moon.
The event attracted the attention of both many astrophotographers and ordinary people. Such conjunctions are a fairly rare event. In addition, Venus and Jupiter are the brightest objects in the night sky after the Moon. Therefore, they could be easily seen even being in the center of a large city with a powerful illumination.
If you look closely, then in the picture of Andrew McCarthy next to Jupiter (lower left part of the frame), you can see several dots. These are its largest moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. According to the astrophotographer, if the largest planet of the Solar System was in the place of Venus at the time of the conjunction, its moons would be visible to the naked eye, and the apparent diameter of Jupiter would be comparable to half of the full Moon.
Earlier we published another beautiful image by Andrew McCarthy showing the Medusa Nebula.
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