O Holy Night

With Christmas comes the story of the birth of Jesus. According to the story there was a bright star that guided the Magi to the manger where Jesus was born. Astronomers have asked themselves if there was some celestial event that would explain this bright star. There were some planetary conjunctions and some reports of comets within a few year of when Jesus was suppose to be born. One of these conjunctions was the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn which also appeared this year around Christmas. 

I have been watching the sky for the past couple of weeks and got a few good pictures just after sunset from my house. 

The one about was taken on Dec 17th. You can see the Moon on the top left and Jupiter and Saturn just above the trees on the right. Jupiter is the brighter one. I watched Jupiter and Saturn get a little close each day. Here is picture I grabbed from https://spaceweathergallery.com/ showing Jupiter and Saturn getting closer. Click on it to zoom in.

The actual conjunction was on Dec 21 where the planets would be within 0.10 degrees of each other. The planets haven't bee this close in 800 years. Unfortunately on Dec 21 it was just too cloudy to get a shot but here is another one from https://spaceweathergallery.com/ show what it looked like. 

You can see Jupiter and Saturn in the top middle of the photo. The inset on the top left shows you a close up where you can see the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter. 

I did get a few picture on Dec 22 where Jupiter and Saturn were almost as close. Saturn is now to the right and below Jupiter. The wide angle shot is at the top of this post. There were clouds around so there only a few opens to get the some pictures. 

I did get a good close up of the conjunction on Dec 22. Saturn looks a little elongated because of the rings and the glare around Jupiter is actually the moons. This is a pretty good picture from a point and shoot camera.

I also got an couple of shots on Dec 23 from my house. 

I'm not sure why these type of planetary conjunctions generate so much interest as they are just two points of lights converging in the sky. But these conjunctions have interested people for thousands of years and is one of the reasons the field of astronomy exists. Originally these conjunctions were thought predict some important event and if that is the case lets hope this conjunction means better things for next year.