Moon, Jupiter & Venus stage rare sky event: watch online live today

It's gray, damp and overcast where I live, and it may only get worse by tonight. Oh no--I'll have to miss tonight's sky show when Jupiter, Venus, and the crescent moon form a triangle.

But there's another option:  watch online today with Peter Grego of Cornwall in the U.K. Grego. He's livestreaming images of the celestial hookup. As I post this, it's just before 4 p.m. in his time zone--which means the best pictures still lie ahead.

Sky and Telescope, which provided the graphic above, notes:

Anyone looking southwest in evening twilight as November turns to December will witness a close pairing of the two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter. On November 30th and December 1st they’ll be separated by only 2° — about the width of your finger held at arm’s length.

And on the evening of December 1st, skywatchers in the Americas will see the crescent Moon joining the two planets to make a remarkably compact celestial triangle. It’s sure to turn heads.

...This week's planeet conjunction marks the second time this year that Venus and Jupiter have mimicked a brilliant "double star" in our sky. Back on February 1st, they appeared together in the eastern sky before dawn. At that time they nestled even closer together — only ½° apart.

The last time these two planets were paired in the evening sky and easily seen was September 2005, when they appeared about 1½° apart. They won't be this close together and well placed for evening viewing again until May 2013 (1° apart).

Joe Rao at Space.com explains the event, with this literary and historical note:

 

A very close conjunction of the crescent moon and a bright star or planet can be an awe-inspiring naked-eye spectacle.  The English poet, critic and philosopher, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) used just such a celestial sight as an ominous portent in his epic, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."  In addition, there are juxtaposed crescent moon and star symbols that have appeared on the flags of many nations, including Turkey, Pakistan, Malaysia, Algeria, Mauritania, and Tunisia.

Also on Monday evening, you may be able to see the full globe of the moon, its darkened portion glowing with a bluish-gray hue interposed between the sunlit crescent and not much darker sky.  This vision is sometimes called "the old moon in the young moon's arms." Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was the first to recognize it as what we now call "earthshine."

Will you be watching tonight in your hometown? If you get a good photo you'd like to have considered for publication here, email me at spacenewsexaminer@hotmail.com