Bahrain’s sky will witness the most beautiful astronomical phenomenon this Wednesday in the distinctive planetary conjunction of Venus and Jupiter reaching its closest point, despite being vastly far from one another in space, the two planets will appear a few degrees apart.
The distance between them in their alignment with Earth would be something around 123717438.49 kilometers for Venus and 838196865.61 kilometers for Jupiter.
Ali Al-Higri, astronomical-researcher, declared that this planetary conjunction comes after the crossing of the paths of the two planets in Bahrain’s western horizon, pointing out that the appearance of Venus had started in the last week of last year’s December, and is expected to disappear by the end of this coming May, whereas Jupiter’s appearance was in the middle of September, and its disappearance is to be expected by mid-April.
According to the astronomical calculations done by Al-Higri, the last time Bahrain’s sky witnessed such a phenomenon was on 16/02/2010 when the sun set at an angle of less than half an arc degree, and will recur again on 01/07/2015 also at the sunset.
Al-Higri said that the winter season has ended in the GCC countries and Bahrain especially this last Wednesday bringing the arrival of spring before its official announcement on the 20th of March, as a result of the appearance of a star named “Saad Alsaud” which will last for thirteen days, a period characterized by major weather unpredictability because of the overlapping of cold and hot weather conditions.