This year has been a year unlike any other in recent memory and it will conclude a return to a celestial occasion not seen for nearly 800 years.
The two largest planets in the solar system, Jupiter and Saturn, will do something unseen from the Middle Ages later this month: creating what looks like a double planet. This celestial event has been dubbed the “Christmas Star”.
The rare event will occur after sunset on December 21, 2020, after the onset of the winter solstice.
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Patrick Hartig, an astronomer at Rice University, said in a statement: “Arrangements between these two planets are rare, occurring every 20 years or so, but this connection is rare because of how close the planets are to each other. “Rice University astronomer Patrick Hartigan said in a statement. “You have to go all the way at 4 o’clock at night, just before early morning on 1226, to see the close alignment between these objects appearing in the night sky.”
Visualization of how the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction will appear in a telescope shown in a telescope toward the western horizon on December 21, 2020 at 6 p.m. Contributed by CC BY 4.0 courtesy of Patrick Hartigan)
Hartig added that between December 16 and December 25, the two planets will separate in less than a full moon.
“On the evening of the nearest approach, on December 21, they will look like a double planet, separated by only one-fifth of the full moon.” “For most telescope viewers, each planet and most of its largest moon will appear that evening in the same field of view.”
The celestial phenomenon, known as the Christmas Star or the Star of Bethlehem, is found nowhere on Earth, but Hartig noted that anyone in the far north direction, “they have less time to catch a glimpse.”
Justin Mason, director of the Pretlo Planetarium at Old Dominion University, told the Virginian-pilot that the birth star could also be a rare celestial union, a star known as Jupiter, Venus and Regulus, dating to about 2 AD.
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This image of Saturn was captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on July 4, 2020.
Stargazers should try to watch the event this month or wait a long time for the next event. “After March 15, 2080, and two years later, the two planets will never be so close again,” Hartigan said.
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The original version of this story is Nov. Published on the 23rd. It has been updated to include additional information.
