Venus & Saturn conjunction to light up North Texas skies this weekend
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) — If you look up in the sky Sunday evening, you'll have an opportunity to see something literally out of this world. Venus and Saturn will be in conjunction with each other, meaning the two planets will appear to be close together in the sky.
According to In-the-Sky.org, the pair of planets will become visible from Dallas as dusk begins to fade to darkness around 6:05 p.m. At that time, the two will make their closest approach to each other, appearing about 16 degrees above the southwestern horizon.
By about 7:32 p.m., Venus and Saturn will drop toward the horizon.
The moon should not be a problem for this event. In fact, by Sunday evening, the waxing crescent moon will only be illuminated about 1%. That means moonlight should not cause problems seeing this cosmic spectacle.
A telescope may help you see the planets better, but they will be fully visible to the naked eye or through your binoculars.
Venus should appear bright but small in the nighttime sky. Saturn, on the other hand, will be considerably less bright than Venus. However, with a telescope or binoculars, experts say that Saturn's rings should be visible.
While the planets will appear to be close together from Earth, in actuality, they will still have a lot of distance between each other. According to NASA's Solar System Exploration website, Saturn is currently about 914 million miles away from the sun while Venus is nearly 68 million miles away from the sun.