Friday January 11th 2002 - edited by Patty Greenall This week in Astro News: ~ Planet Watch ~ ~ Astrofact ~ Planet Watch by Bernard Fitzwalter The easiest planet to see this month is Jupiter, bright in the East each evening. Near and to the left are two other stars - Castor and Pollux, the Gemini twins. Castor is the higher one, Pollux lower and reddish in colour. Ancient skywatchers didn't like red stars; almost all have a reputation for bad luck. But, then again, back in the old days pretty much everything had this kind of reputation. If you want to know why Jupiter appears to be in Gemini when it is actually in Cancer don't miss future editions of Astronews, on this website, every Friday. Please note - if you've missed any previous Astronews features, click on the Archive Thought for the Day link in the left hand frame - you'll find them each Friday. Astrofact In astronomical terms, 11 million miles is just a stone's throw. But today a 400-metre asteroid - big enough to wipe out France – will get that close to Earth. Today's event, featuring an asteroid known as 2001 UU92, is one of dozens which pass near earth each year. On Monday, a similar-sized rock, first spotted on Boxing Day, came within a whisker of us. Known as 2001 YB5, it zipped by at 68,000 miles an hour, just 370,000 miles away. [By comparison, the moon is approximately 238,850 miles away.] Such near-misses are rare. The next big near-miss, with a space-rock called 1999 AN10, will happen on August 7, 2027 at about 243,000 miles from earth. You can find out more on the web at https://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/pha.html, a NASA site listing PHAs (potentially hazardous asteroids). Jonathan writes: Since time immemorial people have been worried about punishment from on high. The motif of an angry god punishing the inhabitants of earth for their sins runs through almost every primitive cult and religion. Clearly we still suffer from the same paranoia today.