Occultation

UPDATE: there will be no smiley in the sky tonight. What we thought of as a smiley, will be a rare conjunction (close pairing) of Venus and Mercury.

As Forbes points out, on May 22, 2020  you will see the bright planet Venus about 10º above the horizon. Look just beneath it and you’ll see the tiny red dot of the planet Mercury. They will be just 0.5º apart

It’s almost like a great cosmic “It’ll be ok”, but next month, on May 16th, to be precise, a crescent moon will sit in the sky beneath Jupiter and Venus to form a smiley face amongst the stars. The scientific term for such an event is an occultation and in this case, it happens when the moon is positioned between Earth and Venus.

The timing of such an event might seem like a sign from above, but they’re not as uncommon as you might think. It was visible in 2008 from Asia and 2012 from Australia to North America. But they are easy to miss, only being visible for a short period after sunset.