Up in the Sky

Venus and Jupiter have been approaching one another in the evening sky, with their closest pairing tomorrow. However I've missed out on watching them move together over the last week because it's been so cloudy. Until tonight, when the weather was clear at the right time of day.

This is the sort of fairly routine planetary conjunction that comes around once or twice a year. Normally I'd just glance up with mild interest, but I'm really appreciating it after the earlier anticipation.

It was the second interesting celestial sight of the day: in the afternoon I saw an A380 aircraft for the first time. I liked the way that its double-decker structure created a bit of a face at the front of the plane, with the "forehead" of the second storey sitting above the "nose" of the cone. Better than the boring standard tube of a typical midsize plane, although not quite as cute as a 747. It has a partial second storey which also creates a face shape at the front but then slopes down halfway along the plane in a way that reminds me of a dolphin.