Venus, Jupiter and the Moon

If you haven't yet seen the Venus, Jupiter and Moon trio and you're not into waiting until 2052 to catch a glimpse of their next rendezvous, then this may be your opportunity to see what we saw in the heavens last night.

Venus (named after the Roman goddess) and Jupiter (after the Roman god of gods) are the second and fifth furthest planets from the sun respectively.

If I'd had 4 hours to take a drive I guess the best place from which to view this would have been the observatory at Sutherland. About 18km outside of the town one finds the location of SALT, the Southern African Large Telescope - the largest telescope in the southern hemisphere. Sutherland is in a cold part of the country, practically in the middle of nowhere, far away from city lights. I've never been sure exactly where Sutherland is, so I took some time to track it down on trusty Wikimapia. Click through to the Wikimapia topographical map to get an idea of where the telescope is, and then zoom in - the guys from Google have made a pretty decent photo available for us.