Next week the night sky will display a striking convergence of the Moon, Jupiter, and Venus, as shown in the image above from Space.com, where we are told:
After Dec. 1, like two celestial ships passing in the night, the planets will slowly separate, but there will still be one more eye-catching sight to see. For on that very same evening, those who gaze toward the south-southwest sky for up to about two hours after sunset arise will be treated to a spectacular sight as Venus, Jupiter and the crescent moon cluster closely together. The trio will form a wide isosceles triangle, with Venus at the vertex.
Space.com is a service that includes both its own website constellations of excellent information about the cosmos at Space.com — and many related science online services — plus supplying the news media with reports to enrich their pages. This evening, as I write this post the most popular story on Yahoo! News is by Space.com Skywatching Columnist Joe Rao: Spectacular Sky Scene Monday Evening.
We see here a trio of 21st century online learning forces converging:
- the interactive delivery of the story through Yahoo! News and Space.com
- the open archiving online of the story for later study
- the benefit to all who visit the report of the expertise of Joe Rao, an instructor and guest lecturer at the Hayden Planetarium.
