[ad_1]
Gettyimages.ru PaulPaladin
An expressive image of Saturn and Jupiter
Saturn and Jupiter, the two largest planets in our solar system, came clearly closer together on the night of Monday, December 21, in an event that has not been repeated in 800 years.
read more
This “great coupling” between the two planets is considered a rare astronomical event, since it occurs when the orbits of the two planets align every 20 years, but it is not always visible, and the planets do not approach excellently, such as It happened on December 21.
And this time, Jupiter and Saturn were only 0.1 degrees apart, less than the diameter of a full moon, drawing astronomy enthusiasts and photographers from around the world to take incredible photos documenting this unique event.
An amateur astronomer was able to take a picture of the “Great Conjunction”, revealing Jupiter and its moons near Saturn, whose creations were strikingly clear in the night sky.
Although the image was captured by a camera attached to a telescope, the giant planets were visible to the naked eye as a bright star in the sky, in what is also known as the Christmas star.
But the conjunction, which brought the giant planets in Earth’s night sky closer than they had been in 800 years, did not actually involve the two planets overlapping. And at its closest point, noon, 0.1 degrees in the sky. That’s close, but far enough away that the two planets are separated through a telescope, as South Carolina meteorologist Ed Piotrowski shows.
Saturn is visible on the right side of the ringed image, and Jupiter is on the left, so that Jupiter’s four largest moons form a line across the planet, with Europa at the bottom, followed by Ganymede at the bottom. line, then Io and Callisto. It was also possible to see Saturn’s moon Titan in the image.
All of these features were visible through a consumer-grade astronomical telescope, as Piotrowski used the Nexstar Celestron 6SE with the Nikon D750 attached.
Source: Space
[ad_2]
