For the last few weeks, countless numbers of the world’s 7 billion people watched the western evening sky as the two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, edged closer and closer to the Venus-Jupiter conjunction. Last night, June 30th, the  Venus-Jupiter conjunction reached its least separation: 0.3° apart (at the time of twilight for the Americas).

But this celestial dance is far from over. Tonight the Venus-Jupiter conjunction will still be only about 0.6° apart, as seen from the Americas, and 1.0° tomorrow night. Then they start to say goodbye and will journey apart as they sink deeper into the afterglow of sunset throughout July.

In Europe Venus will pass Jupiter in late June/early July, 2015. Especially tonight and tomorrow June 30 and July 1 –one can witness the closest Venus-Jupiter conjunction until August 27, 2016.

As dusk turns into darkness, note the star Regulus above Jupiter, in line with Venus and Jupiter. Day by day, watch as Venus and Jupiter race toward Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo.

Conjunctions occur when planets line up in such a way that they appear from Earth to be next to each other – despite in this case being hundreds of millions of miles apart.The event is not uncommon – Venus and Jupiter will appeared together also on 13 November.

There have certainly been cases where they’ve been close in the sky but they’ve not been this close in recent years, certainly the last couple of planetary conjunctions.

The conjunction can be seen in countries in the mid-northern latitudes.