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Are you tired of the Middle Ages? In less than two weeks, the sun will change and the days will slowly but surely lengthen.
On the darkest day of the year, December 21, this year there is a special reason to go out after sunset to look at the sky, as long as you are in the right place.
So the two largest planets in our solar system, Jupiter and Saturn, are getting closer than they have been for nearly 400 years.
60 years until next time
In technical language, this is called a conjunction, when two celestial bodies in the solar system can be seen in the same direction. According to NASA, the phenomenon of Jupiter and Saturn occurs every 20 years, but this year is very special.
The two planets have not been as close to each other in the sky as they will be on December 21, 1623.
At that time, the location of the planets made it almost impossible to see the phenomenon from Earth, explains Amy C. Oliver of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to the New York Times.
According to Oliver, this year’s conjunction is the closest and most visible conjunction between the two planets since 1226.
It is estimated that the next time we can witness the phenomenon will be in 60 years, that is, in 2080.
Visible from southern Norway
If you want to see the “poinsettia” more clearly, experts encourage you to use binoculars or a telescope. However, it should be entirely possible to detect the planets even with the naked eye.
If you opt for the latter, according to NBC News, they can be seen as a big star.
“It’s one of those rare astronomical events where you can see the movement of the planets around the sun without being an astronomer,” Professor Konstantin Batygin of the California Institute of Technology told the New York Times.
For us here in Norway, however, this is bad news: according to NRK, it will be difficult to detect planets in many places. If you are staying in Sørlandet on the day in question, it should be possible to see them around 5pm, if you have a clear view to the west.
