Goodbye February Clouds

It has been an unusually cloudy February around these parts. While that might normally be a novel, interesting, and very much needed thing, this year it comes at the end of a rather wet and rainy and cloudy December and January and there’s something in the sky that I want to watch!

Again tonight it was completely overcast by sunset, and by the time it got dark an hour later it was raining hard again.

No Venus and Jupiter tonight, again. That’s six of the last eight nights where I’ve been shut down by weather.

At least the weather looks to be better in the near future. We might even have a clear sky for tomorrow night, when the two bright planets will appear the closest to each other in the western sky at sunset.

If you’ve got a clear sky tomorrow at sunset, go take a look. Again, no equipment needed, although if you have binoculars you should be able to see the Galilean moons of Jupiter.

If you’re clouded out tomorrow, go take a look the next night. Or the next night. Or on the weekend. Or…

You know the drill. This is not a “tomorrow” thing, although the mainstream media will work hard to generate clickbait headlines. Jupiter will be heading toward the horizon and Venus will be heading up into the sky so they’ll pull apart for the next two or three weeks before Jupiter heads around the far side of the Sun from our viewpoint and Venus will be left by itself to be BRIGHT in the evening sky.