Venus & Jupiter Snuggle Up!

After months eyeing each other from across the sky and all of June getting closer and closer the two brightest planets will be less than 1/3 of a degree apart tonight; they will look like one star. I'm not sure you'll be able to separate them with just your eyes, it may take binoculars to pick them out as two objects.  The two will still be less than a degree apart on the first night of July and will still be less than 2 degrees of separation until the 5th. Both will continue to sink lower and lower into the early evening sky as July progresses although Venus will make a minor retrograde, eastward, move later in the month.
The waxing gibbous moon last night was east (left) of Saturn and above Scorpio. The first full moon of July is Wednesday night and the second, a blue moon by one definition, will be on the 31st.
Today on Earth finds me in Boulder at the home of Lisa and Joe and Ray on a warming, blue sky, Colorado day. Another wonderful reconnection with old friends, a visit into the heart (Pearl Street mall) of a happening city and dinner filled with more tasty treats. We dined at Salt, a restaurant that Joe had helped build, wildly artistic metal and wood pieces, most all made from discarded materials that the master recycler had salvaged from about the area ( and I thought I was recycling building a tire house…). We had started in the soon to open space next door where Joe is working with an friend and restauranteur, again, taking stuff that someone was throwing away and worked it into magic.
A quick check of the USGS earthquake list finds some interesting spots on the US map - Alabama, Tennessee and Michigan and quite a few quakes in the mid-5's scattered about the plate boundaries of busted up, active planet. Volcano updates won't show until tomorrow, so who knows…there's plenty going on, I'm sure, glad there's none nearby.
So readers, get out and enjoy your day on the big planet but, make sure you check out the sky show, tonight on Earth.
With Lisa

 Prairie Dog

 Venus and Jupiter above Salt on the Pearl Street mall

 In Boulder...