Look to the sky this week as Jupiter and Venus will appear to collide

If you look to the sky this week, you'll be able to see a pretty unique site around sunset. That's something called a conjunction. Brian will spoke to the Astronomical Society of Nevada and has the details on what you'll be able to see. Maybe from the strip, it might be hard to find in the suburbs of Vegas, you'll be able to see those looking due west. The two brightest planets in our solar system, Jupiter and Venus, are coming together for the first time in several years. 2016 was the last time that this happened. So that's seven years ago, astronomically that's just a blink of an eye.

Jim Fahey, a retired science teacher and member of the Astronomical Society of Nevada, says these occurrences happen periodically because our planets are all circling the sun on the same plane. Venus has phases. It will never show up as a complete circle because it orbits inside the earth and that dynamics never lets the sun fully illuminate. So you have the sun, Venus and earth and so you can never have a truly fully lit Venus. Is the same thing happen for Jupiter or is that just? No, Jupiter is beyond us. So if you have that flashlight effect, Jupiter is always a fully lit circle. And when planets come together like this, it's called a conjunction and something we can see from earth.

You'll be able to see this off the coalition every night leading up until March 1st. That's when Jupiter and Venus will be at their closest point, which to us still look like one object, but they'll still be 400 million miles apart. Ah, very cool, Brian Will. Well, if you missed out on seeing this conjunction, you can catch these other astronomical events this year, a total eclipse of the sun this spring from Texas to Maine and a solar eclipse happening this fall on October 14th.

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