Watch the moon and Venus snuggle up together in a live webcast

Venus and the moon will meet up in the sky Thursday (May 26) and you can catch their greetings online.

The two worlds will shine in a conjunction and the Virtual Telescope Project plans a broadcast starting at 11 p.m. EDT (0300 GMT on Friday, May 27); you can watch in the window above or directly through the project's website (opens in new tab). 

Venus and the moon will appear only one degree apart in the sky, according to founder Gianluca Masi. Conjunctions, or close approaches between planets and the moon in the sky, are very common because the major worlds nearby us orbit on the plane of the solar system, also known as the ecliptic. 

You can think of the ecliptic as a virtual highway in the sky upon which the planets, moon and sun appear to travel. Sometimes you even get eclipses when one world moves in front of another, from our perspective (or if the moon passes into the Earth's shadow, as what happens during a lunar eclipse.)

Related: The brightest planets in the night sky: How to see them (and when)

In a few more weeks, you should be able to see as many as five naked-eye planets in the sky all at once: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. (Uranus and Neptune may also be visible with a strong telescope.) But these will all be aligning in the hours before dawn, while the evening sky gets more quiet.

If you're looking for binoculars or a telescope to see planets in the night sky, check our our guide for the best binoculars deals and the best telescope deals now. If you need equipment, consider our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography to prepare for the next planet sight.

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