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
- WISE spacecraft
- Discovery site
- LEO , polar orbit
- Discovery date
- 1 October 2010
- Minor planet category
- Earth trojan Aten (2014) Apollo (2013)
- Observation arc
- 768 days (2.10 yr)
- Aphelion
- 1.1903 AU (178.07 Gm )
~6 min read
Article
(706765) 2010 TK7 is a sub-kilometer near-Earth asteroid and the first Earth trojan discovered; it precedes Earth in its orbit around the Sun. Trojan objects are most easily conceived as orbiting at a Lagrangian point, a dynamically stable location (where the combined gravitational force acts through the Sun's and Earth's barycenter) 60 degrees ahead of or behind a massive orbiting body, in a type of 1:1 orbital resonance. In reality, they oscillate around such a point. Such objects had previously been observed in the orbits of Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, and the Saturnian moons Tethys and Dione.
2010 TK7 has a diameter of about 300 meters (1,000 ft). Its path oscillates about the Sun–Earth L4 Lagrangian point (60 degrees ahead of Earth), shuttling between its closest approach to Earth and its closest approach to the L3 point (180 degrees from Earth).