The King of the Gods and the beautiful Goddess of Love will welcome in summer for us with a date in the evening twilight sky in June. It is a great time to watch our solar system at work as the two planets, Jupiter and Venus, swing by each other. At the end of May they are getting closer, and on the evening of June 9, they are at their closest.
The two planets will be visible in the western sky just after sunset for an hour or two depending on how low your horizon might be in that direction. Since all the planets in the solar system orbit the Sun in approximately the same plane, these beautiful pairings happen every now and then. This one features the two brightest planets so it will be a beautiful sight.
You might think that the two planets are actually close together, but that is an optical illusion. They are just lined up with one another. Actually, they are 430 million miles apart now. Venus orbits the Sun between us and the Sun, and Jupiter is out the other direction past Mars.
Looking up there at the planets delicately hanging in the western sky, they look very similar. They are both slightly yellowish and bright, brighter than anything else up there. Actually, that is another illusion. The pair is about as dissimilar as any two things could be.
Climate considerations
Here on Earth, we have a delightful atmosphere of mostly nitrogen, a healthy dose of life-giving oxygen and a dash of carbon dioxide. It is an atmosphere that makes you feel great taking a deep breath on a spring morning.
That is the last thing you would want to do on Venus — unless you like lots of carbon dioxide with a bit of battery acid for flavor. If you want to take a ride in your space on a Venus morning, be sure to keep an eye out for volcanos. Astronomers say there are thousands of them, all belching out toxic fumes.
One more thing: If you have a cabin reserved on Venus for a romantic getaway for two, you might want to call ahead of time and check to make sure the air conditioning is working. The temperature outside is a scorching 900 degrees!
Venus does not sound like a great place to relax on the beach for a couple of days. What about Jupiter? Here we have the opposite conditions. It is the largest planet in our solar system, larger than all the others put together. It is spinning crazy fast, making one rotation every 10 hours. It is covered with beautiful clouds which get whipped into interesting patterns and storms which have persisted for hundreds of years at least.
You are going to have a tough time landing your spaceship on Jupiter. Those clouds, beautiful as they are, do not have anything solid beneath them. Your spaceship would go down and down, and the clouds would get heavier and heavier. Remember the submersible that went down to visit the Titanic wreck on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean? The water above it got too heavy and it flattened the little craft and everyone in it. That is what would happen to you and your spaceship inside Jupiter’s clouds.
Before you go indoors and say goodbye to Jupiter and Venus, take the time to say a silent thank you to Jupiter. Why? Astronomers think that Jupiter and its immense gravitational field actually protects us from incoming objects of mass destruction. The giant planet is quite the collector with 95 official moons and thousands of moonlets, chunks of rock and other debris, flying around.
All that would possibly be out there in space ready to run into us. Going at 30,000 or 40,000 miles per hour, an aircraft carrier-sized rock could do plenty of damage.
Do not worry too much. Events like that are few and far between. If the mosquitoes are not too bad, stay outside awhile and take a look at the Milky Way overhead and all the beautiful stars. We are fortunate to live in a beautiful spot in the universe.
