Bob Eklund
Looking Up

Note: This story is from Sky and Telescope

Mars is moving leftward on its way toward passing between the other two. On August 23 and 24, the triangle shrinks down to a nearly vertical line of three shining points.

The three have nothing to do with each other. Mars is the nearest of them, 7 light-minutes from Earth (79 million miles). Saturn is almost a dozen times farther away: 82 light-minutes (914 million miles). Antares, the lowest of the three in the sky, is about 550 light-years in the background, or 3.3 quadrillion miles into deep space.

Meanwhile, the two brightest planets—Venus and Jupiter—are going through a dance of their own. They’re very low in the sky, due west after sunset. Look for them close to the horizon, somewhat left of where the Sun went down, 20 or 30 minutes after sunset. If you have a very low view and clear air, you’ll see that Venus and Jupiter are drawing closer together every evening. Venus is the lower one. On August 27th, they’ll have such a close conjunction that you may need binoculars to see that they’re two objects, not one!