The bright planets Jupiter and Venus seem to merge. But appearances are deceptive: the planets are hundreds of millions of kilometers apart.

As you know, all planets orbit the sun. Some planets are slightly faster than others. For example, the Earth takes 365 days to complete a circle, Venus does it in 243 Earth days and Jupiter needs no less than 4,332 Earth days. The planets are therefore never in the same position relative to each other and that creates special situations, such as this coming weekend.

Seen from Earth, it looks like the planets Venus and Jupiter are merging. This is because the Earth, Venus and Jupiter are roughly aligned. This can be clearly seen in the image below.

The positions of the planets on April 30. The mutual distances and proportions are not truthful.

Fourteen arc minutes apart

At 6 a.m. Saturday, April 30, Venus will be 13.9 arc minutes south of Jupiter. That’s very close. Did you know that the full moon and the sun have an apparent diameter of thirty minutes of arc? This means that the moon doesn’t fit between Jupiter and Venus: that’s how close the two planets seem to each other.

By the way, you have to look very carefully at the southeastern horizon. The duo is only just above the horizon and the sun also rises fifteen minutes later. A day later you can set the alarm half an hour earlier to spot the two. You can’t miss both planets, because they are the brightest points of light near the horizon.

If you look closely at the map earlier in this article, you will see that Neptune is also (almost) aligned with Jupiter and Venus. Neptune is a little bit to the top right of Jupiter and Venus. Unfortunately, you can’t see Neptune with the naked eye and you need a telescope.

A planet parade on June 24th

Put it in your agenda: the next highlight is on June 24, 2022. Then all planets will be in one row. Five of them – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – can be seen with the naked eye. For Neptune and Uranus you need at least binoculars. As a bonus, the moon can also be seen. That promises to be a spectacle for amateur astronomers.