Last night, April 3rd the inner planet Venus was in the middle of a 3-day cruise across the members of the open star cluster the Pleiades. This is a not so often occurring celestial event that requires a bit of coordination between the orbit of Venus and the location of the Pleiades. Every year Venus will be near the Pleiades but it is only every 8 years around the beginning of April that Venus will pass across the Pleiades as it is doing this year.
Has your local weather has been like mine these past few days with overcast skies. Then last night “adding insult to injury”, we had sleet and ice ensuring that any view of the Venus and Pleiades would be limited to pictures on Twitter! This was the only picture I was able to get on April 1st as clouds were moving in.
So if you did indeed miss it there is always a next time – 8 years from now on, April 3rd, 2028 you will have another opportunity as the graphics below show.
Click here to go to the Qué tal in the Current Skies web site for monthly observing information, or here to return to bobs-spaces.
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