Venusian encounters

BEST TIME TO SEE: From 15 February, after sunset

- 

On the evening of 15 February, oo the brightest and the dimmest planets in the Solar System have an encounter. As darkness falls, mag. -3.8 Venus and mag. +8.0 Neptune will appear just 20 arcminutes apart, low above the western horizon. Close though this appears, earlier in the day, when Neptune sadly wasn't visible from the UK, their closest approach at 12:26 UT had them just 47 arcseconds apart! A more spectacular planetary conjunction comes later in the month and into early March, when Venus will have moved further to the east for an encounter with bri