Mr. Smythe had been giving his second-grade students a short lesson on science. He had explained about magnets and showed them how they would pick up nails and other bits of iron. And now it was question time....
"Class," he said, "my name begins with the letter 'M,' and I pick up things....What am I?"
A little boy on the front row said, "You're a mother."
Conjunction of the planetsIn 2040, the first visible conjunction during the 21st century of the crescent Moon with the five naked-eye visible planets - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - will occur. They will be seen clustered within a small distance of each other in the early evening sky, well east of the sun. When a similar grouping happened in the sky on 5 May 2000, the Moon and the same five planets were lost to view because of the glare of the Sun from among them.«[Image: artist's conception of the conjunction within 9º of the moon and three planets (Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) as viewed on 6 Apr 2000.] |
