Watch the skies: Tonight and Monday

[LongTomH]

For a beautiful sight of a crescent moon, Venus and Jupiter. Here's more from Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy website:

Over the next couple of nights, especially Sunday and Monday (March 25 and 26), a very thin crescent Moon will move in between the incredibly bright beacons of Venus and Jupiter in the west right after sunset.

Here’s a map of what it’ll look like on March 25 around 9:00 p.m. local time:

[niyad]

1. thank you for reminding us.

I saw the spaceweather note on it last night-but it was very late by then.

[Loge23]

2. Nice!

We've been enjoying Venus and Jupiter this past week in their full glory.
The addition of a cresent moon should be beautiful!

[Soylent Brice]

3. good stuff

[tridim]

4. I'm loving the convergences this year.

I saw the crecent moon briefly last night and the dark part was very visible, so cool. I guess the light was reflected off of the earth?

[LongTomH]

5. That's called "The New Moon in the Old Moon's Arms"

It can be an incredibly beautiful sight!

[tridim]

6. It's also apparently called "planetshine"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetshine

The phenomenon known as planetshine occurs when reflected sunlight from a planet illuminates the night side of one of its moons. Typically, this results in the moon's night side being bathed in a soft, faint light. The best known example of planetshine is earthshine, which can be seen from Earth when the Moon is a thin crescent. Planetshine has been observed elsewhere in the solar system: in particular, it has recently been used by the Cassini space probe to image portions of the moons of Saturn even when they are not lit by the Sun.

[samplegirl]

7. Having my friend

break out his super powered telescope tomorrow!