Picture of the Day · NASA
Jupiter and Venus from Earth
2026-06-07
It was visible around the world. The sunset conjunction of Jupiter (left) and Venus (right) in 2012 was visible almost no matter where you lived on Earth. Anyone on our planet with a clear western horizon at sunset could see them. That year, a creative photographer traveled away from the town lights of Szubin, Poland to photograph a near closest approach of the two planets. The bright planets were then separated by only three degrees and his daughter struck a humorous pose. A faint red sunset still glowed in the background. Jupiter and Venus are together again this week after sunset, passing within a degree of each other about two days from today.
© Marek Nikodem (PPSAE) · via NASA APOD
Key facts
- Discovered by
- C. H. F. Peters
- Discovery date
- 20 February 1876
- Pronunciation
- / ˈ j uː n ə /
- Minor planet category
- Main belt
- Observation arc
- 118.30 yr (43209 d)
- Aphelion
- 2.90877 AU (435.146 Gm )
~1 min read
Article
160 Una is a fairly large and dark, primitive main belt asteroid that was discovered by German-American astronomer C. H. F. Peters on February 20, 1876, in Clinton, New York. It is named after a character in Edmund Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590). This minor planet is orbiting the Sun at a distance of 2.73 AU with an eccentricity of 0.07. The orbital plane is inclined at an angle of 3.83° to the plane of the ecliptic.
In the Tholen classification system it is categorized as a CX-type, while the Bus asteroid taxonomy system lists it as an Xk asteroid. Photometric observations of this asteroid made at the Torino Observatory in Italy during 1990–1991 were used to determine a synodic rotation period of 5.61 ± 0.01 hours. It has an estimated diameter of about 81 km.