Night sky delight

The presence of 5 naked eye planets in the night sky over the last few weeks has provided spectacular viewing for those who enjoy such pastimes. Mercury, Venus and Jupiter are currently doing a celestial dance near the western horizon just after sunset, and last night’s asterism was particularly attractive. Venus and Jupiter will move closer to each other until the 27th when they appear to almost touch – an event to look out for.

Mars and Saturn are moving through Scorpius and form a bright trio with the red giant, Antares. This constellation lies in the line of sight of the centre of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, which appears as a fuzzy band of light currently from south to north across the zenith, in reality billions of solar systems, nebulae and dust. And our galaxy is a fairly insignificant one among billions of others in the known universe.
It’s always good to go outside and take a look upwards and outwards as far as our limited visual capacity will allow, to put our world into perspective.