My friend Mike M. sent this picture of Venus with Jupiter and the Moon from his home down in Wilmington, N.C., where he now lives; for those of us in central Virginia, total cloud cover completely obscured the view.

This evening, the separation between the two planets has narrowed to 7° 15' 25" and if we plotted their positions against the ecliptic we could begin to see that while Jupiter has almost exactly maintained its southerly lat- itude with respect to the ecliptic, Venus is noticeably curving back towards it, which is why the upcoming conjunction will occur with greater separation than the similar one back in February 1999.

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