Venus and Jupiter are all right tonight

[vamysteryfan]

A quick reminder that Venus, Jupiter, and the crescent moon should be presenting a lovely triangle tonight. I hope the weather is clear where you are so you can see it. It's clear but very breezy in DC today. I'm hopeful of getting a peek.

Comments

[bluewolf458]

Got a photo of Venus and the Moon, but Jupiter was really too close to setting to show up well with them. Couple of weeks ago, when Venus and Jupiter were close, it was totally cloudy here. We completely missed out on the auroras too because of it. (Not that I haven't seen plenty of auroras over the years, but from what I can make out, these were good ones.)

[vamysteryfan]

I've never seen auroras. I'd love to some day. I missed the really spectacular conjunction of Jupiter and Venus because of clouds. I did see Venus and the moon last night and they were beautiful!

[bluewolf458]

Over the years I've seen a lot of 'average' auroras that were mostly just moving rays of light, but I've seen three really good ones - a curtain aurora (the kind most commonly shown in photos) in around 1965/6, one that covered the sky to the zenith with a pattern of interlocked 'feathers' (and I've never seen a photo of anything like it) around 1980, and one that started</> pretty well overhead, with the rays of light streaming off southwards from a base point, spreading out as they went, in the early 1990s.

I saw more when I lived on the east coast (moved to the west in 1997) because I was fractionally further north - but my advantage is that living in Scotland, I'm further north than a lot of America - about the same latitude as Labrador. Not quite 'land of the midnight sun', but we only have about three hours of darkness in summer, with only the very brightest stars showing; it was quite a shock to me, first time I visited the south of England, how long and dark the summer nights were in comparison, just 500 miles to the south.