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The moment of conjunction will happen at around 9 p.m. EDT, but don't plan on seeing the linkup. The sight is extremely difficult to spot without special equipment and a trained eye.
"The glare from the sun makes it really, really difficult to see," said Michelle Nichols with Chicago's Adler Planetarium.
A conjunction happens when two celestial bodies appear close together in the sky. It could be two planets, or a planet and the sun.
Since Venus and Mercury are "inferior" planets compared with the Earth — meaning their orbits are closer to the sun, according to NASA — they create inferior conjunctions when swinging between the sun and our planet. For Venus, these events happen relatively often, every 19 months or so, according to the science site EarthSky. The alignment during an inferior conjunction is approximate, as opposed to direct, which scientists would call a "transit." Those rarely happen.
Geary Albright, an astronomer and professor at James Madison University, told The Associated Press some people colloquially refer to the type of conjunction happening this weekend as a "Venus kiss," because of the planet's relatively close proximity to the Earth.
Source: www.cbsnews.com
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