Even though Valentine’s Day is behind us love and war have drawn even closer to each other in the low western twilight and very early evening sky.

Have you seen the great celestial show the last several weeks?

It’s a must see in our Butler sky. The very bright planet Venus, named after the Roman goddess of love, and the considerably dimmer yet easily seen planet Mars, bearing the moniker of the Roman god of war, have been in a really close stare down.

This weekend they’re almost touching in the low western sky, popping out shortly after sunset. Also this weekend the new crescent moon is just above the hugging planets to make the spectacle even more fabulous. Don’t miss it.

While Venus and Mars seem to be really close together in the low western skies early in the evening they’re actually nowhere near each other. They’re physically separated by more than 300 million miles.

From our perch, Mars and Venus are nearly in the same line of site. As all three planets travel at different speeds in their respective orbits around the sun. These conjunctions or what I like to call “celestial huggings” occur on a regular basis and they can be quite a site.

Venus is so much brighter than Mars for three reasons.

First off all it’s almost twice the diameter of Mars. It’s also more than 60 millions miles closer than the red planet. And lastly, Venus has a very reflective but poisonous atmosphere that really shoots a lot of secondhand sunshine our way.

Unfortunately neither planet is much of telescope target. Mars is so far away right now about all you’ll see is an orange-red dot and Venus is just a bright ovalish disk of light. This celestial hugging is mainly a naked eye event.

You have to catch the Venus and Mars show early because just about two hours after sunset they both slip below the horizon and you want catch soon because over the next couple of weeks the god of war and the goddess of love will go their separate ways.

Meanwhile on the other side of the sky, Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system is watching Venus and Mars from the eastern heavens. Named after the king of the Greek gods, Jupiter is rising in all its glory in the east. It’s right next to the constellation Leo the Lion that resembles a backward question mark.

There’s no way you can miss it. It’s by far the brightest star in that part of the sky and unlike the surrounding stars it doesn’t twinkle because it’s so much closer.

In fact Jupiter is a little more than 400 million miles away and is still just about at its closest point to Earth is 2015, something astronomers called opposition.

Unlike Venus and Mars that hit the horizon with a few hours after sunset, Jupiter’s available just about all night for us to enjoy. That’s because — just like a full moon — Jupiter and the sun are at opposite ends of the sky. About every year and a month Jupiter and Earth reach this configuration as they both orbit the sun.

At 88,000 miles in diameter it’s more than 10 times the diameter of the Earth. In fact, it’s so big that if it were hollow you could fill it up with more than 1,300 Earths.

Also, if you have super eagle eyes there are times when Jupiter looks like it has tiny little appendages on either side of it. These are Jupiter’s moons. Now there’s no way you can visually resolve them with your naked eyes but no matter how good your eyesight is, even a small pair of binoculars will reveal up to four of Jupiter’s largest and brightest moons that look like tiny little stars.

Actually Jupiter has more than 65 moons that we know of, but the four that we can see dance around Jupiter in periods of two to 17 days.

These are the same moons that Galileo observed in the 1600s that helped him prove that Earth and the other planets actually orbit the sun.

Unlike Venus and Mars, Jupiter’s a great telescope target, even for smaller scopes. Not only can you easily see Jupiter’s moons but you can also clearly resolve the disk of the planet and maybe some of its cloud bands and zones that stripe the big guy of the solar system.

Jupiter is mostly just a big ball of hydrogen and helium gas, but in its outer atmosphere there’s methane, ammonia, sulfur, and other gases that create the multicolor cloud bands. There are two darker bands of clouds on either side of Jupiter’s equator that are the easiest to spot.

There are also storms circulating in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere with the biggest one know as the Great Red Spot that’s three time the diameter of Earth.

This giant hurricane-like storm has been raging on Jupiter for hundreds of years. Despite its moniker, the Great Red spot isn’t all that red. It’s actually a real pale pink.

Unless you have a moderate to large telescope and super clear conditions, it’s hard to spot it in Jupiter’s southern horizon. What also makes it tough to see is that it’s not always facing Earth. That’s because Jupiter rapidly rotates on its axis once every 10 hours, so half of the time the Red Spot is facing away from us.

A really handy website I like to use to keep up with the Red Spot’s visibility is www.projectpluto.com/jeve_grs.htm.

In general, viewing Jupiter through a telescope requires patience. First off, wait until after about 9 p.m. when Jupiter will be high enough to ward off the blurring effects our Earth’s atmosphere.

It’s a good practice whenever you have your telescope trained on any of the planets to take long, continual views through the eyepiece. That’ll not only give your eyes a chance to get use to the light level within the eyepiece, but you’ll also have a better chance of catching extra clearer views of Jupiter through the ever changing clarity of Earth’s atmosphere.

Don’t miss great planet show going on at the both ends of the evening sky right now.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul and is author of the book, “Stars, a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and at www.adventurepublications.net.

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