In the night sky over ESO&rsquo;s Very Large Telescope (VLT) observatory at Paranal, the Moon shines along with two bright companions&amp;#160;: already aloft in the heavens and glowing in the centre of the image is Venus, Earth&rsquo;s closest planetary neighbour, and, to its right, the giant, though more distant planet, Jupiter. Such apparent celestial near misses &mdash; although the heavenly bodies are actually tens to hundreds of millions of kilometres apart &mdash; are called conjunctions.
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