Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Thursday, March 15th.  The sun will rise at 7:53.  It’ll be up for 11 hours and 55 minutes, setting at 7:49.   The moon, 1 day past last quarter, will rise at 4:22 tomorrow morning.

This morning is the actual conjunction of Jupiter and Venus according to astronomers.  They may have looked closest yesterday or the day before, but this morning is the time they  appear at the same right ascension.  Right ascension is the celestial equivalent to longitude on the earth. Meaning that Venus would be directly north of Jupiter.  The terms celestial longitude and latitude have already been taken, and are actually oriented to the plane of the earth’s orbit, rather to the earth’s axis and equator.  First year astronomy students accuse instructors of using such terms just to confuse them.  Astronomers call the angle for the tilt of the earth’s axis the obliquity of the ecliptic.  How’s that for a tongue twister.

* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Jupiter and Venus at nightly intervals from March 12 to 16, 2012. Created using Stellarium.

The 4th step, the one before the last is where Jupiter and Venus are tonight.