In an experience that was once in a few moments, I saw today the connection of Jupiter and Saturn in the evening sky (with a crescent moon thrown into a shoe). While every sixteen years or so the two planets come to an end in close proximity due to their different orbital time (Jupiter orbits the Sun in 11.9 years, it takes Saturn 29.4 years), small differences in their orbital planes make the minimum distance they usually reach a phase order.
Any of these “regular” constellations are still fun to watch, as both planets glow with negative magnitudes in the night sky, making them among the brightest objects. , and how close they are to making them look like a bright “double star”. Jupiter is in fact usually the brightest light source that appears similar to the naked eye, when Venus is not around. Saturn instead equals the brightest stars, its size also depends heavily on the square tilt of its ring system.
However, what we are talking about here is that the two planets are growing so close that even in a high magnification instrument they fit comfortably in the same field of view. An incident like this happens very rarely. The last time something similar happened, of course, was in 1623! The site https://www.space.com/great-conjunction-jupiter-saturn-2020-fun-facts has a lot of details on the link, so I’ll give myself the pain of reporting the same information …
What I want to say is that looking at the connection of this day is far more amazing than I expected. This afternoon, just after sunset, I went out with a pair of 25×100 binoculars, and caught Jupiter and Saturn low on the horizon just minutes before disappearing behind a series of clouds. . The view through the magnifying instrument was relatively low however spectacular: in the same field of view I could see Jupiter, with very little detail on his disk, and Saturn, with the very small rings but certainly visible.
What is inspiring is that by seeing them together, and realizing that one is longer than the other by a few hundred kilometers away, you get a real three-dimensional sense of the relative position of these groups in a system. the sun. Also, the relative tilt of the rings in relation to Jupiter satellites made the three-dimension even more interesting.
Below is the symbolic view of the connection, as seen through a telescope. It’s a bit unfortunate, given how low the two planets are in the evening sky, I can’t identify them with my 16-ink Dobson. But already the views through the binoculars were great.
[Image credit: news.gazette.com].
I strongly recommend that you take a step tonight (if you are in the US you will still have some time before sunset) or tomorrow, or the day after. The two planets will orbit for another day or two (the nearest point will be reached on December 21). And if you do, don’t forget to drop a note in the comment threads below, to let me know what you saw!