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Just a few weeks after Jupiter and Saturn dazzled stargazers by making out side by side in the night sky, anothergreat conjunction“of planets is on the way, and this time, Mercury he is also invited to the party.
On Sunday (January 10), the three planets will appear close together in a rare triple conjunction event. According to the sister site Live Science Space.com, the three bodies will form a “neat little triangle” low in the west-southwest sky, appearing about 30 to 45 minutes after sunset that night. Jupiter will appear at the top of the triangle, shining roughly two and a half times brighter than Mercury and 10 times brighter than Saturn.
Because the trio will appear so close to the horizon and so close to sunset, Space.com’s sky-gazing columnist Joe Rao strongly recommends that stargazers use a pair of binoculars to clearly see the planets. against the twilight sky.
Related: The 12 strangest objects in the universe
This may be the last chance to capture Jupiter and Saturn in the evening sky for a while, as the planets continue to descend lower and lower towards the fiery sunset. (Mercury, meanwhile, will continue to rise, remaining visible through the end of the month. Space.com has more details on how to see it.)
Although all three planets appear to be bumping into elbows, they are still pushing social distancing guidelines to the extreme. When the conjunction began a few weeks ago, Jupiter was about 550 million miles (890 million kilometers) from Earth, or about 5.9 times the distance between Earth and the Sun, while Saturn was about 1 billion. miles (1.6 billion kilometers) from Earth. land, or about 10.8 times the distance from Earth to the sun. Mercury, meanwhile, remains millions of miles closer, about 120 million miles (195 million kilometers) from Earth.
The three planets just look very close together because their orbits place them all in a straight line, relative to Earth.
Originally posted on Live Science.
