The ‘Great’ Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn | NASA

Saturn, top, and Jupiter, below, are seen after sunset from Shenandoah National Park, Sunday, Dec. 13, 2020, in Luray, Virginia. The two planets are drawing closer to each other in the sky as they head towards a “great conjunction” on December 21, where the two giant planets will appear a tenth of a degree apart.
Credits: NASA/ Bill Ingalls

In 1610, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope to the night sky, discovering the four moons of Jupiter – Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. In that same year, Galileo also discovered a strange oval surrounding Saturn, which later observations determined to be its rings. These discoveries changed how people understood the far reaches of our solar system.

Thirteen years later, in 1623, the solar system’s two giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, traveled together across the sky. Jupiter caught up to and passed Saturn, in an astronomical event known as a “Great Conjunction.”  

“You can imagine the solar system to be a racetrack, with each of the planets as a runner in their own lane and the Earth toward the center of the stadium,” said Henry Throop, astronomer in the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “From our vantage point, we’ll be able to be to see Jupiter on the inside lane, approaching Saturn all month and finally overtaking it on December 21.”

The planets regularly appear to pass each other in the solar system, with the positions of Jupiter and Saturn being aligned in the sky about once every 20 years.

What makes this year’s spectacle so rare, then? It’s been nearly 400 years since the planets passed this close to each other in the sky, and nearly 800 years since the alignment of Saturn and Jupiter occurred at night, as it will for 2020, allowing nearly everyone around the world to witness this “great conjunction.”

See the entire post here: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/the-great-conjunction-of-jupiter-and-saturn




Thinking about it makes it Hurt – Kids and Technology

I’m sorry, it’s me – I can’t help it. I’ve tried to keep the insanity from the door of this corner of the web but I can’t do it any longer. The world in which we live is wonderful, beautiful and terrible thing and yet there’s few – well quite a lot of people actually…

Keep reading

Life the Universe and Everything – Don’t Panic!

In this series of posts I’m going to look at the human perspective and ask questions like ‘What does it mean to be human?’ or ‘How can I be a better Human?’ with a little sprinkling of ‘How can I be more comfortable as a human?’In this mad world we’ve been enduring especially over the…

Keep reading

Thinking about it makes it Hurt – Shop Clothing

I’m sorry, it’s me – I can’t help it. I’ve tried to keep the insanity from the door of this corner of the web but I can’t do it any longer. The world in which we live is wonderful, beautiful and terrible thing and yet there’s few – well quite a lot of people actually…

Keep reading

Loading…

Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.

Advertisement

6 thoughts on “The ‘Great’ Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn | NASA

  1. Simon, I attempted to take a photo of the Great Conjunction this evening unsuccessfully.

    I find it interesting that this “Great Conjunction” was first noticed and discovered around the same time as the Great Plague of the 1600s. How amazing we are in a similar situation throughout the world. “Conjunction, the action or an instance of two or more events or things occurring at the same point in time or space.”

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I know this is the thing about celestial events, they seem to come with history and warnings. Like a comet’s coming signals bad times. We had that this year too.

      Like

It's great to hear from bloggies - feel free to leave a comment :-)

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.