01.09.2014 change 01.09.2014

Photos taken by Polish astrophotographer on the popular NASA website

Photograph of the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus taken by Polish astrophotographer Marek Nikodem has been published by NASA website, told PAP Jan Duda from the Polish Astronomical Society.

The picture was taken on Tuesday (August 19) at dawn, in Szubin, away from the intense city lights.

On the August 18 morning there was a very rare meeting in the celestial sphere, attended by Venus, Jupiter and bright open cluster. Conjunction occurs when two bodies meet in the celestial sphere. This phenomenon is the more impressive, the brighter the objects.

According to astronomers, the conjunction deserves to be called superconjunction, because the two brightest planets in the sky met: Venus and Jupiter. Secondly, the minimum distance between them was only 12 minutes of arc. The meeting took place virtually against the background of stars belonging to one of the brightest clusters in our sky, Praesepe (the Beehive Cluster) located in the constellation Cancer.

The website spaceweather.com is dedicated to space weather. Millions of Internet users visit it every day.

Earlier, on Sunday, a picture by the same author showing the Venus and Jupiter conjunction was been selected (for the second time) Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) by specialists from NASA. It is available at http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140817.html

Every day NASA posts another photograph of "our fascinating universe", with a brief commentary by professional astronomer. The first conjunction, immortalized by a Pole, which occurred in 2012, could be observed almost from anywhere on Earth. Marek Nikodem took this photograph also in Szubin. In addition to the conjunction of the bright planets, the photograph also shows the silhouette of the photographer’s daughter.

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