This evening in Australia there were many people who were fortunate enough to witness an alignment of the Moon, Jupiter and Venus. For a few hours they resembled a smiley emoticon.
It was cloudy here. The best I could do was to climb into my spacesuit and fire up Google Sky, part of Google Earth. I located the planets and the alignment is visible. One can simulate the motions of the planets and the moon quite easily. I grabbed a screen shot of the visible sky for the 1st December, 2008.
The Moon. Venus and Jupiter. December 1st, 2008. View large image. Source: Google Earth.
Did you get to see it? Did you manage to capture a photograph?
December 2nd, 2008 at 8:30 pm
[...] night an alignment of the Moon, Jupiter and Venus created an interplanetary smiley emoticon. The weather was quite overcast last night and I was [...]