You may well have heard about the Great Conjunction, where Jupiter and Saturn appear the closest
together in the sky on the 21st December 2020.
Now, I’ve seen varying reports about what is going to happen during this event, so I
thought I’d make this video to clear some things up.
Firstly, while Great Conjunctions happen on the fairly regular basis of once every 20
years, this one is indeed special.
Jupiter and Saturn, which are both visible to the naked eye as bright looking stars,
will appear to be the closest together in the sky since 1623, although not many would
have spotted that one because it was hidden by the Sun.
For a similar, visible Great Conjunction, you would have to go all the way back to 1226.
Now, this does not mean that Jupiter and Saturn will merge from our perspective.
Even to the naked eye, these two planets will be distinct bodies.
However, such will be their closeness that they will be both be easily visible through
the same telescope at the same time.
Let’s have a top-down perspective of our solar system during this time so we can better
understand what we are seeing.
So, the Great Conjunction specifically is this alignment between Earth, Jupiter and
Saturn.
It only happens once every twenty years because Jupiter’s and Saturn’s years are simply
much longer than ours.
Now, as I mentioned, this Great Conjunction is special because Jupiter and Saturn will
appear really close together compared to many previous times.
This happens because although our planets all orbit along the Solar System’s plane,
they aren’t all completely flat on it.
A lot of the planets have orbits that slant very slightly compared to the others.
So sometimes, Great Conjunctions don’t appear that spectacular.
This time, however, there will only be 6 arcminutes between the planets, an arcminute being 1/60th
of a degree in the sky.
In fact, you would have to wait a long time indeed before all planets will be aligned
just right for Jupiter and Saturn to merge from our perspective, called an occultation,
with the best estimates being the year 7531.
The last time this would have happened was probably 6856 BC.
There’s another interesting phenomenon that happens every so often, called a triple conjunction.
From our perspective on Earth, the planets do not go in a simple straight line across
our sky.
In fact, planets beyond our orbit actually do little loops in the sky.
This is due to the speed of our orbit in comparison to theirs.
Keep an eye on the background stars around Jupiter to see how it moves in our sky.
The planet appears to slow down, stop, then goes backwards a bit, before continuing on
the normal way.
So, if you have a Great Conjunction at just the right moment, during a loop, then you
will have three Great Conjunctions in a very short space of time, maybe over only half
a year.
The last time this happened was back in 1981.
While it won’t happen this time, it is interesting simply because people are calling this 2020
Great Conjunction “The Christmas Star”, due to it happening relatively closely to
Christmas.
Connected to that, Johannes Kepler, back in the 1600s, estimated that a triple conjunction
would have also happened around 7 BC, and perhaps was the Star of Bethlehem as referred
to in the Bible.
In fact, Great Conjunctions have been seen as significant events throughout the ages,
potentially as a good or bad omen.
I have never before mentioned astrology on this channel, but just for fun, I decided
to see what they think of this event seeing as astrology is all about the position of
planets in the sky.
They see this Great Conjunction as a sign times will change drastically, due to Jupiter
and Saturn have nothing in common, astrologically speaking.
If there are going to be changes, let’s hope that they will be for the better rather
than for the worse, considering the rough 2020 we’ve already had.
The last question you may have is where can I see it?
Well, luckily for all of you, this particular celestial phenomenon will be visible anywhere
on the planet.
Saturn and Jupiter will be visible in the sky for about an hour after sunset if you
look for them in a westerly direction.
If you can see the Moon, two bright objects will be just next to it.
They will be low in the sky though, so make sure you plan to get to a high vantage point
if you want to observe it, otherwise trees or building may obscure your view.
So, there we have it, everything you could want to know about the Great Conjunction of
2020.
Just a short video today, but hopefully you’ve still learned a little something!
Thanks for watching!
If you enjoyed this video, be sure to like and subscribe for more space videos in the
future.
A big thanks as always to my patrons and members who support the channel, it really goes a
long way.
And lastly, a merry Christmas to you all, or whatever it is you will be celebrating
at this time.
All the best, and see you next time.