Conjunction and Opposition.

The very obvious main event this week is the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter, which is actually next Tuesday, Jupiter is closing fast on Venus, absolutely unmissable over in the west, for a good part of the evening, they both set after 10. And if you’re going to get a conjunction of two planets, Venus and Jupiter is the most spectacular. Venus being the brightest and Jupiter the 2^nd brightest objects in the sky.

Mars is pretty good as well; it was at opposition on Saturday and at its closest point to the Earth last night. Not a very good opposition, in fact the worst in its 15 year cycle with the earth, at almost 63 million miles, it can get as close as 43 million miles, when it appears almost twice as big. But we’ll have to wait another 6 years for that. Because Mars is just past opposition, it rises at sunset and sets at sunrise and will be very close to Wednesday’s full moon.

Mercury (about magnitude –0.8) is having its best evening apparition of 2012. But it’s still nothing to write home about, as the afterglow of sunset fades in the west, look near the horizon for Mercury far below and perhaps a bit right of Venus and Jupiter.

Mercury will have slunk back into the sun next week, so this is your last change for a good while, months at least, to see all 5 naked eye visible planets in the one night. Saturn rises as Venus sets at 10pm due east. The planet is fairly easy to spot a little to the left of slightly dimmer Spica, there’s nothing else comparable in the south eastern sky before midnight.

There are no predicted meteor showers until April, but you are always likely to catch the odd one or two, like the one that appeared in the north of England on Saturday, which was claimed to be as bright as magnitude -9, which would have been bright enough to have been seen by day. And I’m sure there must a few wicker folk up in the wilds of Northumberland who are puzzled that that the world didn’t end.

And speaking of mumbo jumbo, its time for your horoscope, and this week it’s Sagittarius which is just now appearing in the predawn sky after skimming the vale of the Sun in December and as you all know Sagittarius is dominated by Jupiter which is closing in on Venus as fast as a monkey’s bum. Which means for Sagittarians that romance isn’t quite dead, it just smells like it, there is hope yet, despite your running over her cat and claiming half heartedly it was an accident, there is hope yet, but you’ll need to work hard to rebuild that trust, and dribbling less would be a help as well.

And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 91^h anniversary of Mongolia, under Baron Roman Ungern von Sternberg, declaring its independence from China.