A reasonably rare conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in the western sky on the evening of December 1st was turned into quite a spectacle when the pair was joined by the two day old crescent Moon. The three celestial bodies were in such an alignment so as to give the impression of a 'Smiley Face' in the twilight sky.
Although the two planets were only 2 degrees apart and looked very close together from our vantage point here on the Earth they were in fact separated by almost 800 million kilometers. Conjunctions of Venus and Jupiter occur in pairs with the next pair occurring on the morning of May 11th 2011 and the evening of March 14th 2012.

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