CAPITALS August 11. 2024 (Saba) - Mars and Jupiter will make their closest approach of the decade on Wednesday night, astronomers said.
Media reports on Sunday said the two planets will be so close together, at least from our planet’s perspective, that only a small sliver of space could separate them.
In fact, the largest planet in our solar system and its dim red neighbor will be more than 350 million miles (575 million kilometers) apart in their orbits.
The two planets will reach their minimum separation — one-third of a degree, or about one-third the width of the moon — during daylight hours on Wednesday in most of the Americas, Europe and Africa.
John Giorgini of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California added “These events are for fans of following cosmic phenomena and beauty for those who love watching the sky, and wonder what two bright objects so close to each other might be like. Science lies in the ability to accurately predict events years in advance”.
Their orbits have not been this close together, one behind the other, since 2018, and will not happen again until 2033.
The two planets were closest in the past thousand years in 1761, when Mars and Jupiter appeared to the naked eye as a single bright object.
J.A
resource : SABA
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