Smiling Moon & Stars

On the first day of this month Pattaya sky gazers were amazed as the sun sank over the sea and Venus appeared from behind the moon.  Saturn soon burst into view. The crescent Moon eclipsed Venus; an occultation of Venus by the Moon.  The planet seemed to disappear as the dark limb of the Moon passes over it. This phenomenon was not high in the sky here in Pattaya due to the curvature of the Earth. It was right in front of view like one of those science fiction movies of a flying saucer hovering to land.   No need to look straight up it was “in your face, right there,” as local resident Jinan Boons described it.

This  spectacular  event  and  most ‘stellar’  show  of  nature  showed  the evening  sky with  two  of  the  brightest  spots in the sky, planets Venus and Jupiter, looming above the crescent. It was a spectacular event that is said to occur once in a lifetime. The next  time  they will  conjoin  to  be  this  close  together visible  in Thailand will be  in  the year 2052 so children here may get to see it again.

“Conjunctions like this happen about every four years, but they are not the same.  Also, they look different in elsewhere. For  example,  they  don’t get  a  happy  face  in  the U.S.,  they  get a  frown. That night, we got  treated  to a Celestial Happy Face, with  the crescent moon  acting  as  a  smile  and  two eyes  representing Venus  and  Jupiter,” commented  retired United airline pilot and  amateur  astronomer  Captain  Jim Philips. 

Captain Phillips went on to say, “I turned my telescope towards Jupiter and my wife Pui and I even spotted its four moons. Then confirmed that the brightest planet was Venus. Let’s hope that the ‘Happy Face’ over Thailand is a good omen that things will get better.” 

With Pattaya’s unusually clear sky witnesses saw the features of the dark part of the moon with the naked eye. In the photo above, Jupiter and Venus are in conjunction and lie just two degrees apart, so lucky Pattaya sky gazers were able to see the two planets getting much closer to the moon and to Earth. 

National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand, Ministry of Science Technology  announced  that  this  phenomenon happens when  Jupiter which is  in  Sagittarius  group  comes  near Venus at the same time as the moon. This was seen in Pattaya from the southwest after the sunset. This phenomenon is called “smiling moon,” according to the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand.