Astronomy enthusiasts, skywatchers and those who happened to look west Wednesday night will have caught a glimpse of a special celestial display.

Social media feeds in Manitoba have been filling since the sun went down Wednesday, with photos of what appears to be two very bright lights, the one on the right a little bigger and brighter than the one on the left.  

So, what are we looking at? Jupiter on the left and Venus on the right. The celestial event is called the Venus-Jupiter conjunction. The two planets are the brightest we can see from Earth, and throughout February, the two bodies have been creeping closer together each night, with the main event Wednesday and Thursday evenings when the two are the closest together from our viewpoint.

According to EarthSky.com, at conjunction, Venus will pass 0.5 degrees (the width of a full moon) from Jupiter and will be, by far, the brightest objects in the sky, outshining all the other stars visible from our province.

Conjunctions between planets happen relatively frequently, because the bodies orbit the sun in about the same plane as one another, and trace similar paths across the sky.