ldquo;Close Encounterrdquo;br/ Knowing from SkyNews Magazine that this close conjunction (0.5 degrees of apparent separation) of our two brightest planets (Venus amp; Jupiter) was going take place on this morning, I scouted for a nice vantage point of the eastern sky and I settled on a high hill on the edge of Peterborough, called Armour Hill. I waited for the planets to get high enough in the sky to clear the trees (nice foreground interest) and still was able to capture some morning glow on the eastern horizon before sunrise. This is one of the closest pairings of these two planets I have ever seen. The magnitude of Venus was -4.0, Jupiter was -1.8 and the star to their immediate lower left is a 3.4 mag. in Virgo.br/ Details: November 4, 2004, at Ashburnham Memorial Park (Armour Hill), Peterborough, Ontariobr/ Tripod mounted, Nikon Coolpix E995, ISO 400, 8 sec., f/3.0, 11.9mm