Hi folks, tune in every week of 2023 for the best in astronomy from Astronomy Editor Dave Eicher, brought to you by Celestron. Dave’s weekly video series will cover all the latest sky events, scientific results, overviews of cosmic mysteries, and more!
This week, prepare for an exciting observing event that will take place in the early evening on Jan. 22, 2023: Dazzlingly bright Venus and distant Saturn will sit less than a degree apart. That's so close you'll be able to see both planets sharing the same low-power telescopic field!
Video transcript:
Hi, I'm Dave Eicher, Editor of Astronomy magazine and welcome to This Week in Astronomy, brought to you by Celestron, the world's leading manufacturer of telescopes.
This week is really exciting because we have a cool sky event happening on January 22, the early evening sky.
If you have a clear sky, go out on that night, look low in the west, and you'll see Venus — dazzling bright Venus down relatively close to the horizon.
If you look closely, you might see that Saturn is also right next to it, [less than] 1 degree apart. And they're so close that you can see the two of them together in the same low-power telescope field. This is what astronomers call a conjunction of planets.