This year’s May and June is the time of rare planetary dances.
The three brightest planets–Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury–are seen above the horizon together, and on May 26 the sunset is going to be even more spectacular, when these planets will gather to form a bright triangle only three degrees wide.
The planets will all be visible at a 10-degree angle. The best time to look is about 30 to 60 minutes after sunset. The three planets will be close to the horizon, so a clear view of the western sky is essential. The triangle will be seen even in places with heavy urban light pollution.
The triangle begins to disperse on May 27th, but on May 28th, Venus passes Jupiter at a distance of 1 degree, forming a truly remarkable pair.
But the show is far from over.
Venus, Jupiter and Mercury will begin to arrange themselves so that by June 5, 2013, they will be in a line.
Sources:
Planets Aligning in the Sunset Sky
Planetary alignment to draw eyes skyward this weekend
Triple conjunction in the sunset sky on May 26, 2013
In Atlanta at the Arabia Mountains I took a pretty nice picture of the triple conjunction!! Taken on a canon DSLR on 4sec shutter with a fixed lens.
http://instagram.com/p/Z1HV_cjPZP/
That’s pretty cool. I couldn’t observe it because of the cloud coverage. I hope to see the alignment on June 5th, tho.