CHENNAI: If you were someone who looked up at the Western sky on Tuesday, two bright ‘stars’ might have attracted your attention. Those are two planets however, that appear extremely close together due to a phenomena called ‘conjunction’. While in reality, the two planets - Venus and Jupiter - are more than 450 million km apart, their alignment as seen from the Earth was such that they appear next to each other in the evening sky. Scientists say that they would get closest on Wednesday evening. T V Venkateswaran, scientist at the Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi, says that the phenomenon occurs when the planets come in a straight line with the Earth when they are on the opposite side of the sun in their orbit. “As they are on the opposite side of the sun, they tend to look even brighter. They will be in the current position throughout this week,” he says, adding that the two planets would appear closest, approximately less than three degrees from each other when seen from earth, on Wednesday. He says that the next time the two planets would appear this close would be in May 2013. The planets could be viewed with the naked eye. However, when contacted, officials of the Birla Planetarium here said they have not made any special arrangement for the public to view the planets.
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