Google, in a collaboration with NASA, has supplanted their homepage logo in the Northern Hemisphere with a animated Doodle celebrating the winter solstice and recommending that you hold your eyes to the skies for the current “great conjunction” of Saturn and Jupiter.
This year, December 21 denotes the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, and on this longest evening of 2020, a incredible, astronomic occasion known as the “great conjunction” will be on the showcase. The great conjunction is a visual overlap of Saturn and Jupiter, our nearby planetary group’s two greatest planets, in the night sky.
During the show, Jupiter and Saturn, the two biggest planets in our nearby planetary group, will show up exceptionally near each other, as though they were covering to make a twofold planet. The last time we were blessed to receive such a sight was during the Middle Ages – right around 800 years prior.
Some associate it with legendary Star of Bethlehem that guided the three wise men in the Bible’s Nativity story.
To celebrate the first day of winter and the great conjunction happening around the same time, Google has made an animated Doodle demonstrating Saturn giving Jupiter a high-five as it slides on by in its nearby solar system orbit.
A combination happens when any two galactic items show up near one another in the sky when seen from Earth. From our point of view, the two giant planets will show up just a 10th of a degree separated, despite the fact that they are really around 450 million miles separated.
The combination of the two planets happens each 19.6 years, however is the first run through since 1226 that the pair aligns at night and Earthlings had the option to observe it.
The nearby arrangement will be effectively visible to the naked eye while looking the southwest sky soon after sunset.
Google and NASA have given a few tips on how best to see this spectacular extraordinary combination tonight — explicitly December 21, 2020, the night of the winter solstice.
- Discover a spot with an unobstructed perspective on the sky, for example, a field or park.
- An hour after sunset, Jupiter will resemble a bright star and be effectively obvious in the southwestern sky. Saturn will be marginally fainter and will show up somewhat above and to one side of Jupiter until December 21, when Jupiter will overtake it and they will reverse positions in the sky.
- Feel free to use binoculars, yet the planets can in any case be seen with the unaided eye.
