Bad Astronomy

Venus has a date with the Moon tonight!

Don’t forget, the thin crescent Moon and Venus will make a very tight pair tonight! According to my software, they are closest together around 5:00 tonight Mountain time (midnight UT), which is still daylight for me (on the East coast, where the Sun is already down, the timing should be about perfect for this), but even for another few hours they’ll make a very pretty couple in the west after sunset. At closest approach, the Moon will be about 1.5 degrees from the planet, or roughly three times its own width. This is a great photo op! Amanda at Astropixie has more.

And, of course, a little later you can try for Comet Lulin too. I’ll be at Fiske Planetarium watching my friend Luisa Rebull giving a talk tonight, but I’m hoping to get some sky time afterwards, too.