New Zealand: Did you see it? Incredibly rare celestial event happening tonight

An “incredibly rare” celestial event will be held over the next two nights to the delight of Kiwi stargazers across the country.

However, weather forecasts have put a damper on the “once in a lifetime” experience, and Metservice said thick cloud forecasts could make the event difficult to detect.

“Most of New Zealand looks pretty cloudy,” said Metservice meteorologist Tuporo Marsters.

Marsters said there may be a few cloud breaks to reveal the conjunction, but “I wouldn’t put my money on it.”

The incredibly rare event, also known as the Great Conjunction, has been going on for hundreds of years and won’t happen again until 2080, Otago Museum director and astronomer Dr. Ian Griffin told the RNZ Morning Report.

“They will be so close together that you can’t separate them with your eyes … you will need binoculars and a telescope to divide them.

“Jupiter and Saturn unite roughly every 20 years, that’s nothing special, but being so close in the sky is incredibly rare.”

Calculations by some astronomers have suggested that the last time the two planets were so close together was in 1226, he said.

It is also called the Star of Bethlehem because “in 7 BC there was a conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn, and back then the ‘wise men’ were astrologers and this would have had some meaning for them,” he told RNZ .

It is also mentioned in the Bible.

Stardome astronomer Dr. Grant Christie said that although the planets would be at their closest points in our sky since the invention of the telescope, they weren’t close in space.

“On December 21, Jupiter will be 763 million kilometers from Earth, while Saturn will be 856 million kilometers beyond.”

When where

Griffin said the best seat in the house to see the conjunction is anywhere with clear skies tonight or tomorrow night; however, they can be difficult to come by.

The best chance of sighting is from sunset onwards for about an hour and a half later, he said.

“They disappear at 11.15pm, so you have to leave just after sunset.

“Jupiter and Saturn are relatively low in the southwestern sky. So go out tonight, find the moon and then look down to the left and you should see a bright star and that’s Jupiter and Saturn,” he told Morning Report.

So if you point your telescope or even a pair of binoculars at that bright star, you will see that there are two planets: Jupiter and Saturn with their wonderful rings.

“And if you look very carefully, you will see some of the moons, four of Jupiter’s moons and one of Saturn. There will be seven planetary bodies all in that single field of view.