Jupiter rising

Jupiter is visible in the night sky at the moment just above the moon as it rises in the night sky. It is currently approximately 700 million kilometres from Earth.

The camera I used does not illustrate Jupiter very well but with a 20x telescope you can pick out the 4 Galilean moons (Io, Europa, Ganymead & Callisto).

Venus and Jupiter

Venus and Jupiter will be visible near each other in the western sky Tuesday and Wednesday in a rare conjunction event.

The planets, which are hundreds of millions of kilometres from each other, will for a short period of time seem to be galactic neighbours, passing very close.

It will be the closest conjunction of the two planets until August 2016.

Currently Venus is travelling at 35 kilometres per second whilst Jupiter is travelling at 14 kilometres per second.

Venus is currently 40 million kilometres distance from Earth and Jupiter is 588 million kilometres from Earth.

These shots were taken around 23:00, Venus is the brighter of the two planets.