by For this Thursday, March 2, the Colombian sky will witness one of the most striking astronomical phenomena. This is known as “heavenly kiss”, and is given when Venus, Jupiter and the Moon are getting closer together until it stands above the firmament.
During the last few days, the planets Venus and Jupiter have begun to approach each other from the Earth’s point of view, reaching their closest approach on Thursday, March 2.
In Colombia, this natural phenomenon can be observed with the naked eye, in the early hours of the morning.
About 45 minutes after sunset, looking towards the eastern sky, near the horizon, the two planets will be seen as the two brightest points in the sky. Venus will be brighter than Jupiter: it is the third celestial body brightest in the sky, after the Sun and the Moon, as reported by NASA.
At the same time, Venus and Jupiter will also reach conjunction, which is when the planets share the same right ascension (an angular distance used to locate celestial bodies in the night sky). Such proximity of planets is an optical illusion: in reality, they are very far from each other, more than 900 million kilometersso there is no chance of them literally colliding.
Both planets will be only half a degree apart, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. That means they’ll be close enough to be within the field of view of binoculars, and maybe even some low-powered telescopes.
But their orbits will make them look like they could from the point of view of sky watchers here on Earth.
Besides, It should be remembered that this celestial phenomenon will be repeated again in the year 2025, taking into account that in 2024 the conjunction between planets will occur very close to the Sun, which is why it cannot be observed.
NASA discovers a disturbing ‘forbidden planet’, this is the reason that worries scientists
NASA astronomers located an exoplanet the size of Jupiter located outside our solar system, this world has been dubbed “The Forbidden Planet”.
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) detected the presence of a planet located 280 light years from Earth, whose scientific name is TOI-5205b and which has peculiar characteristics that have captured the interest of the community. scientific.
Despite the fact that this ‘forbidden planet’ has dimensions similar to Jupiter, the largest and most distant world in our solar system, in this space body orbits a red dwarf star, named TOI-5205which is smaller in size and mass than the Sun.
In addition to being smaller than our ‘king star’, that star also has a lower temperatureof 3,127 degrees Celsius, compared to the 5,527 °C that the Sun has.
Such a scenario has aroused fascination among astronomers and astrophysicists who want to understand how a star four times the size of Jupiter could have contributed to the formation of a planet so close to its dimensions. Since the ‘forbidden world’ challenges existing theories about the formation of planets and stars.
Currently, modern science has established that stars are formed by the accumulation of large clouds of gas and space dust, materials that become a whirlpool that rotates with force until creating a “rotating disk”. After millions of years, this phenomenon allows the emergence of new planets.
*With information from Europa Press.
