(Photo : Reuters) Jupiter


One of the highlights of this year's astronomical calendar is happening on Monday night. The planets Venus and Jupiter will be aligning and, the occurence will be visible from earth around 30-40 minutes before sunrise, at around 5 am on the north-east horizon.



Venus and Jupiter are expected to only be 0.2 degrees apart, only about an arm's length from each other. Fourteen years have passed since the two have been that close.



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People are encouraged to stay up for the event and to find a good spot or use telescopes or binoculars because the close conjuction is expected to be a marvelous sight.



Venus, which will look like a tiny moon, will be six times brighter than Jupiter because the the clouds in Venus will be lit more intensely by the sun and Venus is closer to the earth.



Jupiter, on the other hand, will be featuring its four brightest moons all in a row.



Robin Scagell, vice-president of the Society for Popular Astronomy, shared "Undoubtedly people could mistake them for a UFO, especially being so low down. They might appear to move around because of the distortion effect of the atmosphere."



Since 2000, this has been the closest the Venus and Jupiter have been, appearing to be "kissing-distance" from each other. However, in true terms, the two are actually hundreds of millions of miles away from one another.



On average, the two planets close conjuctions occur once a year. However, these occurences vary in proximity, visibility and time.



The next occurence between the two is expected on June 30 next year, but astronomers believe that the planets won't be as close to each other.



August has proven to be an exciting month for stellar wonders. The"supermoon" made an appearance on August 10, while the Perseid meteor flew through the skies from August 11-13.

