Venus, Jupiter conjunction to dazzle night skies in March: Here's how to see it 🔭

The brightest planets in the sky are coming together just after sunset on March 1. Here’s how to observe them, and you don’t even need a telescope.

Actually, maybe you’ve already seen them – two brilliant “stars” blazing in the southwestern sky after dark – appearing like suspicious UFOs. The one closer to the horizon before March 1 (and the brighter of the two) is the planet Venus. Venus’ atmosphere reflects so much sunlight that it easily outshines the brightest stars in the sky. The dimmer planet is Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.

You can spot the two planets with the naked eye throughout February after sunset. Each night, they will appear closer together until the night of March 1 when they will almost seem to touch. Venus is much closer to us at about 127 million miles away, while Jupiter is across the solar system at more than 530 million miles. But this lineup, called a conjunction, will make a magnificent sight. Venus and Jupiter will still be visible after March 1, but will slowly seem to drift apart. Watch the planetary parade all month!

25th-anniversary planetarium show

In January 1998, I was working as a part-time naturalist for the Cincinnati Parks. My boss at the time, Lew Spurlock, showed me the cozy, little Wolff Planetarium in Trailside Nature Center and said, “Dean you’re going to be giving planetarium shows. Your first show is next week.” I didn’t know anything about the stars. I couldn’t even accurately identify the North Star. But after my first show, I dove into the subject and became an astronomer. That planetarium changed my life.

Some 25 years and 5,000 astronomy presentations later, as the astronomer for the Cincinnati Observatory, I returned to give a planetarium show under the same dome, with the same machine. The stars are projected accurately on the ceiling by a single lightbulb shining through pinholes in a black, metal dodecahedron. The effect creates perfect constellations like Orion and Leo. The room itself seats only 18 people and when the lights go out and stars shine, it creates a surreal, intimate experience as the universe shrinks. You can almost reach up and touch it.

It was such a treat to give a planetarium show again. Thank you, Cincinnati Parks, for inspiring generations through this special planetarium. For more information on Trailside Nature Center and the planetarium, go to bit.ly/TNCplanets.

Eagle Nebula with the James Webb Space Telescope

One of the most dramatic images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2022 was the Eagle Nebula. And now astronomers have upped the resolution. The zoomed-in view looks at an area nicknamed the Pillars of Creation, a vast region within the Milky Way galaxy that is actively forming new stars.

The Eagle Nebula spans dozens of light years with the longest “pillar” stretching about 145 trillion miles. But at about 5,700 light years away, the Eagle Nebula is not easy to spot through a backyard telescope. In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope captured an iconic image of the Pillars of Creation showing the clouds of gas silhouetted in blues, greens and yellows.

JWST not only topped the Hubble image in clarity and resolution, but its unique instruments captured light in different wavelengths not visible to the eye. Astronomers recently combined the data taken from JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera and the Mid-Infrared Instrument to reveal unprecedented detail of this star-forming region.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Venus, Jupiter conjunction starts off March with bang for astronomers