Mars and Jupiter appear close in the sky

They’ll be so close Wednesday, at least from our perspective, that just a sliver of moon could fit between them. In reality, our solar system’s biggest planet and its dimmer, reddish neighbor will be more than 350 million miles apart in their respective orbits.

The two planets will reach their minimum separation — one-third of 1 degree or about one-third the width of the moon — during daylight hours Wednesday in most of the Americas, Europe and Africa.

But they won’t appear that much different hours or even a day earlier when the sky is dark, said Jon Giorgini of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.