In a phenomenon that will not be repeated before 2033.. Mars and Jupiter will be in conjunction on Wednesday

The two planets will be so close to each other, at least from our planet’s point of view, that barely a sliver of space could separate them.

In fact, the largest planet in our solar system and its dim red neighbor will be more than 350 million miles (575 million kilometers) apart in their orbits.

The two planets will reach minimal separation — one-third of a degree or about one-third the width of the moon — during daylight hours on Wednesday in most of the Americas, Europe and Africa.

But John Giorgini of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California said they wouldn’t look much different until a day later when the sky was dark.

The best views will be in the eastern sky, toward the constellation Taurus, before sunrise. These conjunctions, known as planetary conjunctions, only occur every three years or so.

“These events are for those who love to follow cosmic phenomena and beauty for those who love watching the sky, and wonder what two bright objects so close to each other might be like. Science lies in the ability to accurately predict events years in advance,” Giorgini said.

Their orbits haven’t brought them this close together, one behind the other, since 2018, and won’t happen again until 2033.

The two planets were closest in the past thousand years in 1761, when Mars and Jupiter appeared to the naked eye as one bright object.

This latest conjunction of Mars and Jupiter coincides with the Perseid meteor shower, one of the brightest of the year. No binoculars or telescopes are needed to view it.

Source: AP