Triple Conjunction with Lucifer

On Sunday, Venus, Jupiter and the Moon will gather together in the pre-dawn sky

[On June 5, 2012, Venus passed directly between the Earth and the Sun, a rare astronomical phenomenon known as the "Transit of Venus" that will occur again in 105 years. This month, 13.7 Billion Years considers "Earth's twin," from the scientific study of the planet to its mythological underpinnings, with the series Second Rock from the Sun.]

Astronomically speaking, the transit of Venus is called a "conjunction," an instance in which two or more celestial bodies are near each other in the sky.

On the morning of Sunday, June 17, just before dawn, Venus will be part of another conjunction, a triple conjunction with Jupiter and the Moon. This slow dance between these heavenly bodies will be visible to the naked eye, as they are the three brightest objects in the night sky.

To many ancient civilizations, this morning version of Venus was believed to have been a star. The ancient Romans called it Lucifer, meaning literally "light-bearer," from the Latin words lucem ferre.

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image: Conjunction of Venus, Jupiter and the Moon on December 3, 2009. In the night sky over ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) observatory at Paranal, the Moon shines along with two bright companions : already aloft in the heavens and glowing in the centre of the image is Venus, Earth’s closest planetary neighbour, and, to its right, the giant, though more distant planet, Jupiter. Such apparent celestial near misses — although the heavenly bodies are actually tens to hundreds of millions of kilometres apart — are called conjunctions. Still other sights delight this night view at Paranal : the radiant, reddish plane of the Milky Way, smouldering on the horizon, and an 8.2-metre VLT Unit Telescope, along with a 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescope, standing firmly on the ground. (credit: ESO/Y. Beletsky, Wikimedia Commons)