Maybe, one last sight for the year: Mercury and Venus close to each other down on the evening horizon, as our own planet rolls on around the Sun into 2023.
See the end note about enlarging illustrations.
They are only 17° from the Sun. Venus is shining at magnitude -3.9, Mercury much fainter at 0.4
This is the evening before the closest conjunction, which comes at 8 Universal Time on Dec. 29, so on the next evening you may be able to see that the little spark of Mercury is sinking past Venus.
This space view shows the planets’ paths in December, and sightlines to them from Earth on Dec. 28. (The planet globes, at the 1st of the month, are exaggerated 300 times in size, the Sun 4 times. The dashed line is the vernal equinox direction.)
Mercury was at its greatest eastward elongation – appeared farthest out from the Sun – on Dec. 21; it now appears stationary against the background of the stars on Dec. 29, and also happens to be at its ascending node, crossing the ecliptic northward.
Venus, beyond, has a long way to travel out to its greatest elongation on June 4.
And what is that cloud into which Earth is advancing? It is a cloud of comet dust which will make everyone behave better in 2023.
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
is comet dust the same as magic dust? That’s the dust that enables Santa’s reindeers to fly, according to Cheech and Chong.
I dustn’t know.
Quite a hope-inducing farewell to 2022!
I got a good view of both Mercury and Venus a couple of nights ago. It’s been cloudy since.
No luck with either Mercury or Venus as there’s always been clouds or trees around their location.I searched the dusk with my 2×40 Helios Starfield wide field binoculars a few days ago but only picked up a,at the time,thin crescent Moon.Still I’ve seen all the planets except Neptune in 2022 although I could have got Neptune too but I haven’t bothered to look this year.