Why did there appear to be two moons in the sky on Wednesday night?
If the sky was clear over your town on Wednesday evening, you might get the impression of seeing two moons. This was of course not the case. How is this phenomenon explained?
No, you can’t double. If you looked at the sky on a Wednesday night, and there weren’t a lot of clouds or light pollution, you would probably think you saw two moons. It was nothing of course.
so what happened? The two very bright “moons” were actually the planets Venus and Jupiter and form a planetary conjunction. On Wednesday evening, the two stars were at an apparent distance equal to the diameter of the moon’s disk. In fact, it was an optical illusion. The planets are hundreds of millions of kilometers apart. So there was no danger of them colliding! Despite this optical illusion, the two stars are not the same size. Venus is ten times smaller than Jupiter.
The two planets can see each other well with the naked eye with Venus being much brighter than Jupiter. The phenomenon peaked on March 1, 2023. It appeared in the northern hemisphere.
Great views of Jupiter and Venus next week! Don’t miss them, look west after sunset… they won’t be this close again until May 2024
Image credit: John Jardine Goss/Earthsky pic.twitter.com/l1w1O0vi1c
– Dr. James O’Donoghue (physicsJ) February 24, 2023
If this phenomenon has eluded you, reassure yourself. It will be visible again on Thursday evening, between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., even if the two planets will be less close on Wednesday. To see it, you need to look at the sky towards the west.
The next time this astronomical phenomenon will occur will be in May 2024.
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