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Charlie Riedel / AP
Saturn, above and Jupiter below, are seen in the sky over Kansas in the United States on Monday night (local time). The alignment known as the “great conjunction” has also been called the “Christmas Star”.
Jupiter and Saturn appeared to viewers on Earth to be closer to each other on Monday night than they were for 400 years.
If you missed the moment, there is still a chance to see something almost as good for the next few nights as long as the clouds don’t get in your way.
Not only has it been nearly four centuries since the two gas giants last appeared to be so close, it’s been 800 years since it happened at night, giving most people around the world a chance to see it.
But the window of time available to see the planets in the coming nights is short. Gisborne amateur astronomer John Drummond said that Jupiter and Saturn would only be visible early in the evening, possibly as late as 10 p.m.
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They would be low in the sky in a west-southwest direction. “Jupiter will be quite bright below. Saturn will be less bright and very close to it, ”Drummond said.
Grant Birley
Grant Birley seized the opportunity when the sky cleared for a few minutes.
On Monday night, the two planets were about one-fifth the width of a full moon. The distance between them would start to slowly increase.
“They start to separate, and each night they start to settle earlier and earlier, until we lose them in the western glow,” he said.
Probably within a month they would get too close to the Sun to see. They would probably start to appear in the morning sky in late March.
“By then they would have started to separate in the sky. Instead of being separated by a fifth of the diameter of a full moon, they will probably be separated by up to 10 lunar diameters, ”Drummond said.
Mehnaaz Abdullah
Mehnaaz Abdullah sent this to Stuff from Cape Town.
The great conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter occur every 20 years, but not as close as now. According to Space.com, the conjunctions of these two planets are called “large” because they occur less frequently than the conjunctions of the other bright planets.
It won’t be until March 2080 that Saturn and Jupiter will reappear almost as close to each other as they are now.
As the Stardome Obvservatory points out, the two planets only appear close to each other because that is how it looks from Earth. Jupiter is about five times farther from the Sun than Earth, and Saturn is about 10 times farther.
