In case you didn’t know it, today, December 21, 2020 is the day we mark the beginning of Winter, when we have the least amount of hours of daylight and therefore, when it is also the longest night. But this year is different (enter your ‘you can say that again’ joke here), not only because of the pandemic, but because of an event in tonight’s sky forecast that people are calling the “Great Conjunction” of Jupiter and Saturn, or the “Christmas Star.”
While it looks pretty overcast right now, perhaps you will get lucky enough to witness this rare astronomical event– specifically, the positions of the planets Jupiter and Saturn being aligned in the sky closer than they have in nearly 400 years. If that isn’t jaw-dropping enough for you, it has been nearly 800 years since the alignment of Saturn and Jupiter occurred at night, as it will this year.
Learn more about when to start looking up by reading this article by NASA, because they know more about space stuff than I do.
And, until next time, Happy Winter Solstice. ~Carol
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