Photos: Rare Celestial Dance Of Jupiter, Venus And Mercury

This conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and Mercury was shot in Las Vegas with the Stratosphere in the foreground. (Photo by lybrand/ Credit to Yahoo News).
This conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and Mercury was shot in Las Vegas with the Stratosphere in the foreground. (Photo by lybrand/ Credit to Yahoo News).

At the end of May 2013,  Jupiter, Venus and Mercury form a celestial triangle in the night sky.

The three planets shine together in a triangle formation low in the western sky in a planetary meet-up known as a conjunction.

We can even see them with naked eyes if the sky is clear and the place is not too bright.

This cosmic show is so special spectacular because it includes the three brightest planets visible in the May night sky.

Venus is the brightest of the trio, with Jupiter a close second and Mercury coming in third.

Flickr photographers snapped awesome photos of this very rare and special event.

Please click the photos for larger images:

Our Solar System

There used to be 9 planets and more than 170 moons in our solar system.

The 9 planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

But in August 2006, the International Astronomical Union decided to re-classify Pluto as a “dwarf planet”, and not in the same category as the 8 planets.

So now there are 8 planets in the solar system.

Each planet goes around the Sun on its own path called orbit.

Anyway we cannot see the paths because they are invisible.

Earth takes about 365 days to orbit the Sun.

This is called one Earth year.

And each moons moves around its planet in its own orbit.

The size of the planet from the smallest to the biggest:

  1. Mercury

  2. Mars

  3. Venus

  4. Earth

  5. Neptune

  6. Uranus

  7. Saturn

  8. Jupiter

On April 12, 1961, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin became the first person who went to space.

People travel to space in a spacecraft or spaceship.

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