Jupiter and Venus had been getting closer and closer in the pre-dawn sky for the last couple of weeks. The Cincinnati Observatory's Wes Ryle says they've been getting a lot of calls about them.
“They happen to be very close to each other in the sky right now,” he says. “The closest approach was actually this (Tuesday) morning. But they’ll be visible in the night sky close to each other for the next few weeks. They’ll just be slowly drifting apart from each other.”
Ryle says Venus is a lot closer to the Earth and the sun, so that's why it's brighter, even though Jupiter is a lot larger.
“It’s always a trade off in terms of distance and size. Even though Jupiter is significantly larger than Venus, Venus has the edge, just because it’s closer.”
The astronomer doesn't expect a whole lot of spectacular celestial shows for the rest of this year. Ryle says there won't be any eclipses — solar or lunar — visible locally. There is the Perseid Meteor shower, which peaks soon.
“I’ve been seeing a lot of posts on Facebook and social media telling you to go outside and view hundreds of meteors per hour, but that’s definitely an overstatement simply because the moon is going to ruin the Perseid meteor shower this year," he says. "The moon is pretty close to full — it’s a little bit past full — so that means it’s going to be up and bright right at the time where you’d want to be viewing meteors.”
Ryle says there are the Orionids in mid-October, and the Leonids in November, and the Geminid meteor shower in December. He says the moon won't be a problem for those.
He says there is a comet, 3I/Atlas, but it probably won't be very bright.
“But comets are also known to be very unpredictable so there’s always the chance that maybe it goes through a bit of flaring activity, maybe it breaks up a little bit as it’s approaching the sun,” he says. “If that’s the case, that might bump up the visibility. You just never know.”
3I/Atlas is the third object from outside our solar system detected. Ryle expects more will be discovered now that a new observatory has opened in Chile.
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